Oral Answers to Questions

NORTHERN IRELAND

The Secretary of State was asked—

Grammar Schools

Teddy Taylor: What percentage of secondary school children in Northern Ireland attend grammar schools; and what the percentage was 10 years ago.

Barry Gardiner: In 2004–05, 41 per cent. of secondary school children attended grammar schools compared with 40 per cent. in 1994–95. As the number of secondary school age children continues to decline, the proportion of pupils with grades C and D admitted to grammar schools is expected to continue to increase, so while the actual enrolment figures may remain relatively static, the percentage figures for those attending grammar schools could rise further.

Teddy Taylor: As the Northern Ireland grammar schools have provided unique opportunities for able children from disadvantaged areas to break through the class barriers, and as Northern Ireland has achieved hugely successful education results, why cannot the Government leave the system alone? Does the Minister not accept that abolishing the selective tests will basically undermine the whole principle on which the grammar schools have been created and have achieved so much for the people of Northern Ireland?

Barry Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman will know that only 7 per cent. of children from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds go to grammar schools, unlike the rest of the post-primary sector where 29 per cent. of children from disadvantaged backgrounds attend the secondary school sector, so to say that that is the way through for bright children from poor backgrounds really is a myth. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not wish to suggest that only 7 per cent. of those children were capable and intelligent and were therefore able to prosper from a good education. We must ensure that children from precisely those disadvantaged areas have the educational opportunities that he rightly insists should be there for some.

Iain Luke: My hon. Friend will recognise that this is an issue on which I have written to Ministers before, but does he agree that the controversy that surrounds it clearly underlines the need for constructive working by all parties in Northern Ireland to ensure an early return of an Assembly there so that the local issue of education is dealt with in Northern Ireland itself?

Barry Gardiner: My hon. Friend is entirely right to point out that it would be a good deal better were these decisions being taken by the Assembly. Of course, this matter came from the Assembly. It was initiated by the Assembly, and in that sense we are continuing work that was begun under that Administration.

David Lidington: The Minister wants to scrap academic selection in Northern Ireland. Does he think that the majority of people there support that policy?

Barry Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman will know as well as I do that the responses from the household survey were mixed—58 per cent. of people wanted to get rid of the 11-plus and 64 per cent. of people said that for grammar schools academic selection in some form might be retained. Equally, he will also know that 77 per cent. of parents—a figure less often quoted—said that they thought that the transfer from primary to post-primary should be by parental preference, and that is what we are trying to achieve.

David Lidington: The Minister knows that the point of principle at stake here is not the 11-plus or an alternative method of academic selection, but the Government's determination to get rid of academic selection altogether. If the Minister is confident that he has public support, why does he not put it to the test and give parents in Northern Ireland the same right to a vote on grammar schools that the Government have given to parents in England? Why is he running so scared of the views of parents in Northern Ireland?

Barry Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We are not running scared of anybody. In fact, on 28 January we launched a public consultation and 14,000 consultation documents have already gone out, precisely to seek the views of the public and of education professionals on a wide range of options available for transfer.

Peace Process

Alistair Carmichael: If he will make a statement on the peace process.

Si�n Simon: When he last met Irish Government Ministers to discuss the Northern Ireland peace process.

Paul Murphy: The Government's ultimate goal remains the restoration of an inclusive power-sharing Executive in Northern Ireland. However, both we and the Irish Government are clear that the main obstacle to achieving this is the Provisional IRA's continued involvement in criminal activity.
	I keep in close contact with the Irish Government to   discuss ways of moving the process forward and will be meeting them again next week at the British-Irish intergovernmental conference to review the position.

Alistair Carmichael: May I suggest to the Secretary of State that the identification by the Irish Justice Minister of Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams as members of the IRA council alters the political landscape in Northern Ireland, that our priority in that altered landscape should be the promotion of democracy and accountability, and that we should therefore be willing to consider new options, including the recall of the Assembly, without Sinn Fein in the Executive if it cannot meet the required standards?

Paul Murphy: As I said earlier, the Government's ultimate aim must be that which the people of Northern Ireland expressed when they voted for the Good Friday agreement and an inclusive Executive. However, the hon. Gentleman makes a valid point that the trust and confidence simply does not exist at the moment in Northern Ireland to establish that inclusive Executive. We have examined alternative ways of allowing people in Northern Ireland to increase the accountability of Ministers and ensure that the democratic deficit is tackled. However, any solution requires cross-community support from nationalists and Unionists. That is not always easy to obtain.

Si�n Simon: My right hon. Friend knows that communities such as Erdington and Kingstanding in my constituency, which has one of the highest concentrations of people of Irish origin anywhere in Britain, in a city that marked before Christmas the 30th anniversary of one of the worst and most despicable terrorist outrages in Britain, feel profoundly powerless and frustrated at such times. What promises can he offer such diaspora communities of two steps forward when all they seem to hear about from London, Dublin and Belfast is one big step back?

Paul Murphy: There is no point in trying to underestimate the difficulties that we currently face in the process through the Northern bank robbery and continued criminality on the part of the IRA. However, it is also important to look at the bigger picture, examine what has happened in the past decade and realise that Northern Ireland is a better place in which to live and work. For example, the latest employment figures in Northern Ireland are the best ever. More people are in work there than ever before. People enjoy a standard of living and quality of life that they never previously experienced. We cannot underestimate the problems with the political process but we must appreciate the enormous progress that has been made in Northern Ireland in the past decade.

David Trimble: Does the Secretary of State realise that the position that he has adopted is tantamount to saying that the IRA will have a veto over the creation or resumption of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the implementation of the agreement? If he continues to adopt that position, there is no prospect of progress. Indeed, he will have to move from it before we have any chance of progress. Does he not also ignore the fact that the people who supported the agreement in the referendum voted for parties to adopt peaceful and democratic means, which Sinn Fein and its linked organisations refuse to do? The agreement provided for consequences in such circumstances, but the Secretary of State is obstructing them. Is it not time that he thought the matter through clearly?

Paul Murphy: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman is accurate when he says that I have adopted a position in the rigid fashion that he suggests. He knows that I said yesterday that we have ruled nothing out or in and that we are considering all the different options. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman knows much more than me about the difficulties of making something work after the restoration of an Assembly. I do not say for one second that an Assembly should not be restored in Northern Ireland if we believed that we could get such a body to work and to produce an Executive that would be representative of the entire community in Northern Ireland, with nationalists as well as Unionists on it. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we have not ruled out the different suggestions that he and other political parties in Northern Ireland have made in recent weeks. However, none of us must forget that the central obstacle is the problem of criminal activity by the IRA. We have to deal with that. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be reassured that we have not ruled out his suggestion or others that might be presented in the House and during the political talks in Northern Ireland.

Seamus Mallon: Does the Secretary of State agree that the single greatest obstacle preventing criminality from being dealt with is the inability to protect people who want to give evidence but cannot because of the paramilitary might that surrounds them? Does he agree that while other things are not possible at present, one thing is possible and should be required of every political party that will be involved in any future negotiations? Should not all those parties now join the Policing Board, so that the Police Service can protect the only people who can end criminalitythe people on the ground?

Paul Murphy: My hon. Friend is entirely right to point out that intimidation of witnesses is a major problem in Northern Ireland. He was referring to a specific case in Belfast, and I could not agree more with all that he has said about it. I also agree that it would be right for every political party in Northern Ireland to accept the policing arrangements recommended by Patten and the Good Friday agreement, and that that is ultimately the best answer in policing terms.
	I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend's party, for accepting the new policing arrangements. That took great courage, and has shown over the past few years how important it is for Catholics to join the police force and become members of the Policing Board.

Jeffrey M Donaldson: The Secretary of State will know of the plight of innocent victims of terrorist violence, many of whom sense that during the peace process they have not been given enough recognition and support. He will also recall that both during and since the negotiations, the Democratic Unionist party has argued for the establishment of a victims commission to champion the cause and the rights of victims of terrorist violence. Does he now recognise the merits of that idea?

Paul Murphy: Yes, I do. I know that the hon. Gentleman and his party, along with other parties and organisations, individuals and groups in Northern Ireland, have investigated the possibility of such a commission, and I see great merit in it. I hope to be able to make a statement to the House shortly. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman that the work done by victims groups throughout Northern Ireland is enormously important in bringing about reconciliation. I visited the Wave trauma centre not long ago, and was deeply impressed by what I saw.

David Lidington: Does the Secretary of State agree that if the republican movement wants democrats of any persuasion or background to start taking it seriously, it might begin by dropping its incredible claim to be able to decide whether or not a particular action is a crime, and then advise republicansin undiluted language rather than weasel wordsthat if they have evidence connected with criminal activity, and in particular with the brutal murder that took place in Belfast the other week, they should go to the police and give the Police Service of Northern Ireland whatever evidence they can provide so that the killers and their accomplices can be detected, arrested and brought to trial?

Paul Murphy: Yes, I agree with all that. The hon. Gentleman echoed points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) about the importance of ensuring that people go to the PSNI and give them all the information that they have, so that the murderers involved in that particularly horrendous case in Belfast can be apprehended.
	It is important for the words used to be much clearer, and for people in the community we are discussing to go to the police. I am sure the House will agree, however, that it is also important to recognise that there may well be a shift in the traditional support for republicans in Northern Ireland, because people are fed up with intimidation, thuggery and savagery on the streets of Belfast and other cities and towns in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein

Andrew Turner: What recent discussions he has had on Sinn Fein's fitness for political office in the Province.

Paul Murphy: The Independent Monitoring Commission's latest report, which I published earlier this month, made it clear that, had the Assembly been sitting, it would have recommended that Sinn Fein Ministers be excluded from office in response to the Provisional IRA's involvement in the Northern bank raid. In the absence of an Assembly, the commission recommended that I impose financial measures. My statement to the House yesterday set out how I intend to give effect to that recommendation.
	The Government will not promote a political settlement in which a party inextricably linked to an organisation that has carried out major criminal actscan assume responsibilities in a devolved Administration.

Andrew Turner: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. He told the House yesterday that restoring the Assembly would be very difficult in the absence of a clear plan that would see the parties in the Assembly come together on a cross-community basis to form a Government, so we have the extraordinary position where Sinn Fein has behaved so badly that it deserves to be excluded, but it cannot be excluded because it has behaved so badly that there cannot be an Assembly from which to exclude it. Why is he allowing Sinn Fein this veto?

Paul Murphy: The hon. Gentleman is referring to the same sort of point that the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) made earlier. I am not saying that Sinn Fein has a veto over the political process. I am saying that, if we restore the Assembly under the current rules that govern its operation, we have to have a situation where there will be nationalists and Unionists operating an Executive in that Assembly. It would be much better if we could get a clear plan of how that would work before the restoration, but I repeat the points that I made to the right hon. Member for Upper Bann. We are not ruling out such a possibility, but we obviously have to ensure that whatever plan arises has a chance of working.

Eddie McGrady: Does the Secretary of State agree with the current expression of the position in Northern Irelandthat it is leading to political stagnation? He indicated in an earlier answer that he will seek to give greater accountability to the people of Northern Ireland. Has he examined carefully the proposals made to him and to the Irish Government by the Social Democratic and Labour party? Has he discussed them with other parties, and indeed, have other parties made submissions? In the meantime, political accountability is missing. Will he abide by the answer he gave on Any Questions?, when he said that it was not his business to impose legislation on Northern Ireland against the will of the people? Yet that is the very thing that he is doing with the legislation on higher education and water charges. He knows the will of the people of Northern Ireland through the decision of the Northern Ireland Grand Committee, which defeated the Government motion on higher education.

Paul Murphy: That is why it is very important that we see an end to direct rule as soon as possible, so that the people in Northern Ireland who are elected by Northern Ireland voters can take these decisions for themselves. The person who is most anxious to see the end of direct rule is me. That is so important for future democracy in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend's party has made proposals for restoring the Assembly and having civic administrators running the Departments until such time as an Executive could be restored. Different proposals have been put forward by the different parties. We are trying to find a way through that because the SDLP's proposals are not yet acceptable to members of the Unionist parties on the Opposition Benches. We have to find some method by which we are able to ensure that democracy returns, but there are quite significant gaps at the moment between the different ideas.

Nigel Dodds: Does the Secretary of State accept that Sinn Fein's unfitness for office was clearly illustrated in the disgusting pictures of Gerry Adams at a parade in Strabane on Sunday presiding over an IRA show of strength with men in paramilitary uniforms, when he eulogised IRA murderers? Is not it clear that the Secretary of State should take action in relation to that event? Given that Sinn Fein has clearly failed the test of democracy, does he accept that, as far as my party is concerned, no matter what others have done in the past, there will be no further chances for Sinn Fein-IRA, there will be no further fudging of democracy, there will be no more second chances for IRA-Sinn Fein and it is time to move on without them?

Paul Murphy: I think that I have referred to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question on more than one occasion this morning. On the first part, obviously, any prosecution is a matter for the police and I am sure that the Parades Commission will have seen what happened, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the general point that he makes. I do not see that photographs or television pictures of people in paramilitary uniforms help the process in Northern Ireland. In fact, they hinder it considerably.

David Winnick: In view of the fact that Sinn Fein's credibility has rightly been at an all-time low in recent months, does my right hon. Friend agree that we should be very careful not to play into its hands by giving the impression that it is being politically prosecuted? That is precisely what the IRA wants in order to turn the tables and keep up its vote in Northern Ireland and, of course, in the Republic of Ireland.

Paul Murphy: The issue that is holding up political progress in Northern Ireland is criminal activity on the part of paramilitary organisationsin this case, particularly the Provisional IRA. We must deal with that if we are to make any progress in Northern Ireland in the months to come. The answer is, frankly, now in the hands of the republican movement itself. It can alter the future by ensuring that Sinn Fein goes down a completely and absolutely non-violent and peaceful road.

Lembit �pik: Does not the current approach risk playing directly into the hands of Sinn Fein by generating exclusive dialogue between the Government and Sinn Fein-IRA instead of an inclusive discussion with all the other organisations involved in the process? Does he acknowledge that there is a risk of over-focusing on Sinn Fein, thereby under-focusing on other supporters of the process? Will he give an assurance that he will drive the peace process forward so that the obstructive individuals and groups have to run to keep up, instead of holding the entire process back to keep up with the slow learners?

Paul Murphy: The hon. Gentleman knows that I said yesterday that this Government and the Irish Government do not believe that we should stop talking to any of the political parties in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Fein, because it is important to keep the dialogue going. The main issue that we face remains the problem of criminal activity, which needs to be resolved. The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a democratic deficit, and we must talk to all the political parties in Northern Ireland to ensure that we overcome it.

Decommissioning

John Robertson: What recent discussions he has had with the Irish Government in connection with IRA decommissioning.

Ian Pearson: As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, we continue to discuss with the Irish Government ways of moving the peace process forward. Decommissioning was, and is, an issue that has to be resolved.

John Robertson: Does my hon. Friend agree that fortoo long, IRA-Sinn Fein have seen token decommissioning as their way on to the Executive while still continuing with their criminality? Will my hon. Friend stand firm with the Irish Government and get a message across to Sinn Fein-IRA that only total decommissioning will do, and that it has to take place with the agreement of both Governments?

Ian Pearson: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that we want total decommissioning. The British and Irish Governments are at one on that. We want to see not only decommissioning, but an end to paramilitary and criminal activities on the part of the Provisional IRA.

Lady Hermon: Since the de Chastelain commission has already cost nearly 4 million and achieved scarcely anything, can the Minister honestly stand at the Dispatch Box and tell the House that it has been money well spent?

Ian Pearson: As a Government, we need a decommissioning commission and we are absolutely clear about that. The cost of the de Chastelain commission has been some 3.8 million over eight years, which I do not believe is excessive. As a Government, we continually look to ensure that we keep costs to a reasonable minimum and I can tell the hon. Lady that, since 200001, there has been a 60 per cent. reduction in the annual cost of operating the decommissioning commission. If we are to take the gun out of politics, we need such a commission.

Harry Barnes: Do we know what the IRA is doing with its money? Are there any signs that it is recommissioning rather than decommissioning, or is it just acting like a mafia?

Ian Pearson: I do not know personally what the IRA is doing with the proceeds of the Northern bank raid, but 45 detectives are working on the case with their counterparts in the Garda Siochana, trying to track down those responsible. It is clear from the last Independent Monitoring Commission report that the Provisional IRA continues to maintain a capability, and that so-called punishment beatings are still being carried out by both the IRA and loyalist organisations. All of that is unacceptable to the Government, and we are making every effort to deal with those problems effectively.

Security Situation

Andrew MacKay: If he will make a statement on the security situation in the Province.

Ian Pearson: Paramilitary activity by republicans and loyalists continues in various forms, although it is at a relatively low level compared to previous years.

Andrew MacKay: Can the Minister give a categorical assurance that, in the present difficult circumstances, there will be no troop reductions in the Province and that no military installations will be removed?

Ian Pearson: No, I cannot give that assurance. The assurance that I can give is that the Army will always provide the level of support to the police that is appropriate and necessary, given an assessment of the threat. We will not take any risks with the security of the people of Northern Ireland, but it is important that we use our resources in the most effective manner. That means ensuring that they are deployed against the threat that exists. Therefore, we will look at these matters from time to time, in a sensible and responsible way.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked

Engagements

Bob Laxton: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 23 February.

Tony Blair: This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I will have further such meetings later today.

Bob Laxton: Large-scale capital investment has been made in the schools in Derby, which I welcome. However, there is still a need for further moneys to be made available to rebuild establishments such as Lees Brook secondary school and Ivy House school. I also very much welcome what I term the curriculum investment being made in vocational education. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that a future Labour Government will continue to pump capital money and curriculum investment money into education?

Tony Blair: rose

Hon. Members: Answer!

Tony Blair: Yes, I can assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to make that investment in the state education system, in which the capital investment programme has risen sevenfold since this Government came to power. That money is providing new schools, classrooms and computer equipment, and it is also helping to provide new teachers and teaching resources. I think that I am right in saying that in Derby the investment has risen from just below 3 million to over 50 million in the past few years. I can assure my hon. Friend of one other thing: we will not take money out of the schools budget and give it to a private education voucher system, as proposed by the Opposition. Instead, we will continue the investment programme that has secured record results at every level.

Michael Howard: We all agree that terrorism is a real and current threat, and that special powers are needed to deal with it. Today this House will debate the Government's proposals, but before we do so, will the Prime Minister clear up one area of confusion? Will he confirm that nothing need be finally resolved in the next two weeks, as the existing powers can be extended beyond 14 March?

Tony Blair: Of course it is true that we could extend the existing powers, but the House of Lords ruled that we should change them, and we are bringing forward the new proposals in deference to the House of Lords judgment. I have made it clear throughout that the Government strongly support the existing powers. That is our position, but the House of Lords judgmentwhich I am sure that the House would expect us to respecthas led us to bring forward the control orders proposals. The security services and the policethrough the Association of Chief Police Officershave told us that the orders are necessary to protect this country's security. My understanding is that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his party will vote against the control orders in total.

Michael Howard: I have in front of me the Government's own explanatory memorandum, published less than four weeks ago. It makes it clear that
	the Act
	the terrorism Act
	remains  . . . valid, enforceable and effective,
	and that in
	exercising the powers . . . the Secretary of State is . . . acting lawfully.
	We have offeredI repeat that offer todayto renew those provisions for a short period so that Parliament can fully consider the nature of the legislation needed to replace them. Will the Prime Minister now accept that offer?

Tony Blair: As I have just explained, the reason why we have brought forward these alternative proposals is that we believe that we must act on the House of Lords judgment. Yes, of course it is correct that I and other Government members supported the existing legislation. That is why we fought the matter in the House of Lords. However, in the end the issue, as I understand it from our discussion last Friday, is one of principle. The Leader of the Opposition is opposed to the new control orders altogether. That is my understanding of his position.

Michael Howard: Does the Prime Minister not recognise that the Government are in the mess that they are in today because the existing legislation was rammed through Parliament? Surely he should learn from that mistake rather than repeat it. Is not the best way forward to give Parliament the time it needs to work towards a consensus, so that we can effectively protect our country from terrorism?

Tony Blair: First of all, I do not accept that the powers were rammed through Parliament. They were necessary. I simply point out to the Houseand, incidentally, to the countrythat several hundred people have been arrested post-11 September in connection with terrorist activity in this country. There is a serious security threat to this country. That is the view of our security services and chief police officers, particularly those concerned with terrorism. It is important, therefore, that we take the necessary measures, while respecting civil liberties, to protect the nation's security.
	We can debate the matter over and again[Hon. Members: No, we can't.] Well, the advice of our security services and chief police officers is that we need control orders. In other words, we need to be able to disrupt the planning of terrorist activity early and we need to have orders in place, the breach of which can lead to immediate imprisonment. Whatever debate we have, there is that issue of principle. My understanding of the Liberal Democrats' position is that they are not against control orders in principle; their worry is about judicial scrutiny. That is their position. As I understand the position of the Leader of the Opposition, he makes the point about judicial scrutiny, but it is more fundamental than that. He is against control orders completely. Perhaps he will confirm that that is true.

Michael Howard: We do have reservations about control orders, but let us be quite clear: we have offered to support renewal of the existing powers so that the House has time to consider the issues fully. We have come up with constructive proposals based on the Newton committee recommendations to ensure that more terrorists are sent to prison rather than left in the community, and we have put forward a carefully constructed scheme to allow intercept evidence to be used in court with the absolute guarantee that no evidence prejudicial to national security would be disclosed. The truth is that there are alternatives to the Government's proposals that would more effectively protect British lives and the British way of life. Such measures are too important to be steamrollered through Parliament. We need time to debate the issues. Why is the Prime Minister denying Parliament that time?

Tony Blair: First, let me deal with the issue of intercepts. There is an issue about whether we let intercept evidence be used. We have come to the conclusion that it should not be used because the strong advice of those engaged in this type of business is that it would disrupt their service. Indeed, that was the advice received not just by this Government, but by the Leader of the Opposition when he was Home Secretary and raised precisely that issue. That is, no doubt, why he did not do that when in office.
	However, the second point, which is completely different, relates to the use of control orders. The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the Newton committee, which specifically recommends such provisions. Therefore, the issue between us is this: it does not matter how much time for scrutiny there is[Interruption.] That is because there is an issue of principle, which is this: the security services and the police say that these orders restricting the movement of people whom we suspect are planning terrorist acts in this country are necessary for our national security. That is accepted here, and it is even accepted by the Liberal Democrats; the question is whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman is prepared to accept that. The fact of the matter is that we are not steamrollering this measure through; rather, I am afraid that he is playing politics with it.

Michael Howard: The Prime Minister accuses us of playing politics. I will tell him what playing politics is all about. Playing politics is when a Government ram a Bill through Parliament when they do not need to. Playing politics is briefing national newspapers that terrorist suspects would have to be released when they would not have to be released. Playing politics is using national security for political point scoring, when that should be the furthest thing from the mind of a Prime Minister faced with these threats. Why does the Prime Minister insist on curtailing debate on these vital questions? Why will he not recognise that there are alternatives to his proposals that merit consideration? Why is he being so arrogant about these questions, which are so fundamental to our security and our liberties?

Tony Blair: I will tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman what should be the nearest thought in a Prime Minister's mind in these circumstances: protecting the security of the country. That is what I intend to do, and I repeat that the reason why we are putting forward these proposals is that the security services, unanimously, and the heads of police in this country, unanimously, have recommended that these powers are necessary to disrupt the planning of terrorist activity in this country. We know what these terrorists can do, and we know what they want to do. The advice of the security services and of the police is that these powers should be introduced. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has now set his face against them altogether. In my view, the only responsible thing to do is to put the security of our country before any other consideration. That, if I may say so, is not simply what a responsible Prime Minister should do, but what a responsible Leader of the Opposition should also do.

Peter Pike: My right hon. Friend will know that four years ago, the biggest single problem in Burnley was that there were 4,500 empty houses, and the dereliction and destroyed housing market that that caused. He will know that Elevate is a housing renewal pathfinder project in east Lancashire, that the number of empty houses is now falling, and that the housing market is beginning to improve. Can he reassure the people of Burnley that the Government's long-term commitment to that process will continue, and that we will also get the 150 million for new high schools that they are committed to providing?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about what is happening in Burnley, and I understand from my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary that it is also happening in Blackburnso we have Burnley and Blackburn on the same side. The most important thing, however, is that we keep this investment going. There are areas of the countryI have visited many of them over the past few monthswhere regeneration programmes are making a real difference on the ground. That is why we will never follow the Opposition's proposals. Cutting the housing programme and the sustainable communities programme would do immense damage to communities such as those that my hon. Friend represents, and we simply will not do it.

Charles Kennedy: Returning to the proposed terrorism measures, and following on from the exchanges on them, why is the Prime Minister seemingly so convinced that more accountability will be built into the system if the Home Secretary decides whether someone is to be locked up and that decision is subject to a judge's re-examination within seven days, than if the decision is taken in the first instance by the judge on the basis of an adequate burden of proof? What has persuaded the Prime Minister that more accountability can be achieved at the expense of overturning long-standing fundamental principles of justice?

Tony Blair: I do entirely understand that as a point. It is obviously a completely different point from the one being made by the Conservative party. The reason why we have decided, however, that it is right in the first instance that the Home Secretary has these powers is for speed of action, but it has to be taken before a court within seven days. Obviously, we would hope to do that far more swiftly than in seven days, but the key thing is to get the control orders in place. As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman is not opposed to them, but he would like it to go in front of a judge first.
	The reason why we have chosen this method is that although we will bring it before a court very quickly, in seven days maximum, there may be circumstancesthis is what we are concerned aboutin which the Home Secretary has to act very, very quickly and there could be a delay in bringing it before a court that could cause difficulty. One of the things that I should like to say to the right hon. Gentlemanand to the House, and more widely, to the countryis that there are large numbers of people whom we are surveying at the moment. We keep them under surveillance in this country because we believe they may be involved in the planning or funding of, or the procurement of weapons for, terrorist offences. It is extremely important that we have the maximum speed of movement to disrupt them if we decide that although we do not have the evidence to secure a conviction, we none the less reasonably suspect that they are engaged in such terrorist activity. I come back to the point that I made a moment or two ago: the essence of this, for us, is the existence of the control orders. The reason why we have introduced the Executive order first, which will then be subject to judicial review, is that there may be circumstancesalbeit a limited numberin which for speed of action we need the Executive order first.

Charles Kennedy: Yes, but as we all know, all too sadly, our country has been no stranger over the years to either the threat or the reality of terrorism. Is it not worrying, where the principles of justice are concerned, that under three successive Labour Home Secretaries, we have today house arrest and the ending of trial by jury, and in the future, ID cards? Whenever the Government are presented with a problem their instinctive response is authoritarian. After two terms of Labour government, where would our civil liberties be left were there to be a third?

Tony Blair: I really do not accept that identity cards are the same type of issue at all. They are a necessary, sensible measure in the modern world, and I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman and the Conservative party are against them. In respect of terrorism, howeverlet us be very clearwere there to be a serious terrorist act in this country and afterwards it was thought that we had not taken the measures necessary, believe me, no one would be talking about civil liberties; they would be talking about why we had not done more to protect the security of this country. I agree that these powers should be taken only in the most exceptional circumstances, but I conclude on this point: I do not believe that the terrorism we face today is the same as the IRA terrorism of, hopefully, the past. I think that these people would kill thousands of our citizens if they could. I think that this is terrorism without limit, and that in the use of suicide terrorists, it is differentso in those circumstances, for that limited number of cases, my best judgment is that considerations of national security have to come before civil liberties, no matter how important those civil liberties are.

Gordon Prentice: Has my friend had an opportunity to visit my website, gordonprenticemp.com, to read about the disgraceful behaviour of my Liberal-controlled council in Pendle, which is selling greenfield land for development although there are brownfield sites all around? Is not that another case of the Liberals talking green but acting dirty?

Tony Blair: That sounds to me like a very fair case; I must make sure that I visit my hon. Friend's website. He is absolutely right of course; there is always a great difference between the way the Liberals act in theory and how they actually act whenever they have their hands on power.

Nicholas Winterton: May I tell the Prime Minister that on Sunday 13 February, my wife and I attended the annual Christ the Healer service for the East Cheshire hospice, which we jointly opened 17 years ago? The reflections of an 88-year-old day-care resident, Barbara Jo Millington, were read out at the service. May I quote just a few of her words:
	What a pity Government funding is so mean to this worthy cause. Let's hope the politicians will not need the special care if or when it is no longer there.?
	May I ask for an assurance that he will review the funding of the hospice movement, because it undertakes work that otherwise would have to be carried out by the national health service?

Tony Blair: First, I congratulate not just the hospice that the hon. Gentleman referred to but the hospice movement in general on the magnificent work that it does. [Interruption.] An Opposition Member shouts, Give them money, but we are now investing an extra 50 million a year in specialist palliative care services, including hospices. That represents a 40 per cent. increase in NHS funding since 2000. In addition, almost 50 million, on top of the existing funding that I have just mentioned, is being made available over the next three years by the New Opportunities Fund and 15 million of that money is going directly to children's hospices. I am well aware that it could be more, but it is also fair to say that the Government are making a far greater contribution to the hospice movement than before. Of course, part of the increasing budget of the primary care trusts can also be used for such palliative care, and I hope very much that some of that money, at least, finds its way to the hospice mentioned by the hon. Gentleman.

Helen Jones: People living near Beamont junior and infant schools in my constituency are very concerned about drug dealing in their area and are supporting my campaign for CCTV to stop drug dealers using a phone box opposite the school. Will the Prime Minister offer his backing to the residents who, as the Warrington Guardian rightly put it, are setting out to stop this evil trade? Will he assure them that the measures that the Government have implemented to tackle the menace of drugs will make a difference on the ground, that people who are dealing from rented properties will be evicted, and that drug dealers operating outside schools will receive much harsher sentences?

Tony Blair: I congratulate the people in my hon. Friend's constituency. Yes, we certainly will make sure that that is the case. Indeed, the Drugs Bill now going through Parliament makes it an aggravating factor in an offence if a drug dealer is using someone under the age of 18 near school premises. In addition, of course, we have the new power to shut down houses that are being used for drug dealing, and I know that it is being used in many parts of the country now. In addition we have the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which allows us to take money from drug dealersmillions of pounds is being taken from themor, for example, to confiscate their cars, the means of transport from which they often do their drug dealing, and force them to prove that they came by the money for them lawfully. Those are all new powers that we have given. I hope that the police and local authorities use those powers, because when they are combined with the action of local residents, they make a difference in many parts of the country.

Adrian Flook: What is it in the Prime Minister's principles that now makes it right and acceptable, against the recommendations of four Select Committees, to sell arms to China?

Tony Blair: The reason why we have supported a change in European policy in respect of China is that we think that the reasons originally given for that ban no longer apply in the same way. What is more, we are not simply removing the existing restrictions, we are replacing them with a whole series of obligations, not just for ourselves but for all European countries, which will mean that only in very specific circumstances would those arms be sold. I think that that position is sensible because it meets both the concerns about China and its legitimate interest to be treated in the same way as other parts of the international community.

Ronnie Campbell: The Prime Minister, like many Members, will be aware that we have had a lot of letters and postcards about public sector pensions. Can he tell us what the situation is now and, more importantly, whether there is any chance of a compromise on this thorny subject?

Tony Blair: I know that discussions are taking place between my hon. Friend and the unions about this. The situation is difficult, for a reason that I am sure he appreciates: the actuarial advice is that there is a 400 million shortfall. That must be met in some way or other, and we certainly do not want to land it on people's council tax bills. We, like virtually every employer in the country, including some of the trade unions themselves, are looking at how we can make proper provision for pensions in the future. I hope that a compromise can be found, but it must be consistent with the prudent management of our resources.

Teddy Taylor: When the Prime Minister met President Bush this week, did he remind him that the US supplied massive quantities of weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein when that repulsive dictator was invading Iran? Did he further ask why US troops today are protecting Camp Ashraf, although there are more than 1,000 trainee terrorists there belonging to the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq organisation? In the light of all that, will he try to persuade President Bush to resolve his problems with Iran penitently and peacefully, rather than in any other way?

Tony Blair: We obviously want to ensure that we get a diplomatic resolution to the situation regarding Iran, as President Bush made clear over the past few days. There are genuine concerns, which I am sure that the hon. Gentleman shares, about Iran in relation to the development of its nuclear capability, its sponsorship of terrorism and human rights issues. All that is right, but it is possible, through the engagement by Britain, France and Germany that is happening, backed by the United States, to get a diplomatic solution, so that is what we are working for. On Iraq, I would simply point out that the appalling dictator Saddam Hussein has, of course, been removed from Iraq only as a result of the action of coalition forces, including British and American forces.

Jim Knight: On behalf of my constituents, may I thank the Government for the proposed new offences to punish careless drivers who kill? The majority of those drivers are young men. Will the Prime Minister urgently examine the effect of car magazines such as Max Power, which target irresponsible young men and effectively encourage them to break the law, most recently by congratulating someone on speeding at 120 mph through the Dartford tunnel?

Tony Blair: I hope that anyone who publishes such magazines recognises that they also have a responsibility to encourage law-abiding behaviour. I have not seen the specific article to which my hon. Friend refers, but it certainly sounds deeply irresponsible.

David Burnside: The Prime Minister has shown great leadership in his fight against international terrorism, and he has based that on a belief in freedom and democracy and an opposition to tyranny. In our back yard in Northern Ireland, we have republican criminals who are unfit to join the Executive Government at Stormont. Will he persuade his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to bring together the two Unionist parties, the Social Democratic and Labour party and the Alliance party to determine whether we can form a voluntary coalition of democrats against the republican criminals in Northern Ireland, and let democracy defeat terrorism and criminality there?

Tony Blair: There is always a question of whether we can find a way forward, and we would require not merely the Unionist parties but the SDLP to be prepared to co-operate in such a way. I still believe that the best way forwardalthough this might not be possibleis on an inclusive basis. However, I say to the hon. Gentleman that we should not ignore one positive thing that has come out over the past few weeks: the strength of feeling about the need to ensure that no one should come into government in Northern Ireland unless they are exclusively committed to peaceful and democratic means. That feeling exists not only in Northern Ireland but in the whole island of Irelandin the Republic of Ireland, too. Unified pressure from north and south is now necessary to ensure that we either manage to get a way forward involving all political parties, or find a different way forward.

Si�n Simon: In order for us to push most vigorously on with our project of rebuilding and revivifying communities that the Tories tried but failed to destroy, please may we have a general election straight away?

Tony Blair: I do not think that this is quite the appropriate moment to say that. However, whenever the election comes, I look forward to putting up in lights an economic record of low inflation, low mortgages and low unemployment

Bob Russell: Boom and bust!

Tony Blair: Absolutelywithout the boom and bust of the Conservative party. I look forward to putting up in lights record public services investment, rather than the private voucher scheme of the Conservative party. I also look forward to putting up in lights the antisocial behaviour legislation that is making a difference in various parts of this country, although it was opposed by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Whenever the election comes, I think we will be in pretty good shape.

James Clappison: The Prime Minister has said that the Mayor of London should apologise for his remarks, which in the view of many people were offensive and ignorant. Yesterday the Mayor of London refused to apologise. Is that it, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned?

Tony Blair: The Mayor of London has said what he has saidI have already made my position on it clear. I believe that it is sensible to move on, however. I will tell the House what else I thinkthat there has not been a bigger supporter of the state of Israel than this Government and this Prime Minister. Whatever mischief some Conservatives make out of the incident, I hope that it is not taken seriously, as I am sure that it is not, by the Jewish community.

Tom Harris: Will the Prime Minister join me in paying tribute to a charity based in my constituency, Glasgow The Caring City, led by Rev. Neil Galbraith, which was one of the first, if not the first, charity to mobilise aid for the areas most affected by the Boxing day tsunami? Yet despite our record of delivery in the developing world, The Caring City has not been able to access any funds raised by the Disasters Emergency Committee. Does the Prime Minister agree that smaller charities, as well as large ones, should be able to get some of the money raised by the generosity of the British people?

Tony Blair: I entirely understand my hon. Friend's point. Of course, how the funds are distributed is a matter for the member agencies of the committee, and the extent to which they can provide support to other organisations is a matter for their trustees. I hope, however, that support is given to the small charities as well as the larger ones. The generosity of the British people has been quite remarkable, and the combined generosity of the British people and of the British people through the Government through the taxpayer now runs into many hundreds of millions of pounds. That will do an awful lot of good in rebuilding some of the places that have been deeply affected by the tsunami.
	Perhaps the House will be interested in hearing that the most recent figures for the loss of British life in the tsunami are 199 in category 1that is, likely to be lostsignificantly fewer than 100 in category 2 and, I think, 61 confirmed dead. The contribution made in my hon. Friend's constituency and right around this country is an incredible tribute to the generosity and good spirit of the British people.

John Hume: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I know that the hon. Gentleman wants to make a point of order, but the rules of the House are that I must take it after the statement. I will happily do so after the statement.

Education and Skills (14 to 19)

Ruth Kelly: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members leave the Chamber quietly? There is a statement.

Ruth Kelly: I would like to make a statement about the reform of education for 14 to 19-year-olds.
	I would like to start by putting on record my thanks to Sir Mike Tomlinson and his working group members for their time and effort. They issued us with a challenge: how to fulfil the needs and aspirations of every young person. Today, I shall set out how we will meet that challenge.
	We have made much progress in raising standards in our schools. As a result of smaller class sizes and the literacy and numeracy strategy, we have the best ever primary school results. As a result of the continued record investment and reform in our secondary schools, we also have the best ever GCSE and A-level results. There are more young people in apprenticeships than ever before, but we now need to go much further.
	Historically, our education system has produced a high-achieving elite while failing the majority. In today's global economy, in which our national competitiveness increasingly depends on the skills of each and every person, we cannot afford to let so much talent go to waste. We cannot afford to let intellectual snobbery leave us with a second-class, second-best vocational education system.
	I agree with Sir Mike's analysis: there are historic weaknesses in our education system which we have to tackle. Too many young people are unattractive to employers, deficient in the basics of English and maths, unprepared for further study and unable to demonstrate their true potential. I want all that to change.
	I want to transform the opportunities available to young people. I want the same emphasis on vocational education as we currently have on academic. I want all young people to leave school competent in the three Rs. I want every pupil stretched to their full potential. All teenagers should have the opportunity of a place in education, training or on an apprenticeship. Education maintenance allowances are already helping overcome financial barriers. I want to end the scandal of our low staying-on rate at 17, increasing it from 75 per cent. to at least 90 per cent. over the next decadeeffectively making the current school-leaving age a thing of the past.
	There are some who argue that to transform opportunities for our children, we should scrap the current system of GCSEs and A-levels. I do not agree. We will not transform opportunities by abolishing what is good, what works and what is recognised by employers, universities, pupils and parents. We must build on what is good in the system, and reform and replace what is not working.
	In my reforms, there will be a relentless focus on the basics. It is totally unacceptable that at least 70,000 16-year-olds a year are weak in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. I want and expect much more. I want every young person to be competent in English and maths before leaving school or collegeto be able, for example, to work out their family budget or write a clear description for an insurance claim.
	I am therefore toughening GCSE so that, in future, no one will be able to get a higher grade in English or maths without mastering the basics. I shall free up the curriculumstarting at age 11to make space for extra help and support in English and maths to ensure that children who fall behind can catch up. I shall introduce a new diploma to recognise the achievement of those who achieve five good GCSEs or equivalent, including English and maths.
	We must also transform vocational opportunities. Our programme of apprenticeships has made an excellent start in this. We must build on that and go further. We need qualified health care professionals, software designers, plumbers, graphic designers, engineers and much moreall competent in the basics, all with specialised skills and all ready to acquire more skills as they progress. To achieve that, we need specialised qualifications that include both practical skills and academic content, with English and maths at their core as well as relevant GCSEs and A-levels. We need all universities to value those qualifications, and we need employers actively to seek out students who hold them.
	The key is to give employers a real say. To do so, I shall introduce new specialised diplomas and ask employers, via their sector skills councils, to sign off their content. Specialised diplomas will be made available in 14 broad subject areasreflecting key sectors of the economyat levels 1, 2 and 3. They will replace the current system of around 3,500 separate qualifications. The first four employer-designed diplomasin information and communication technology, engineering, health and social care, and the creative and media industrieswill be available in every local area by 2008. I am pleased to tell the House that major employers such as IBM, Hewlett Packard, Rolls-Royce, Nissan, the national health service and the BBC have already agreed to work with us on their design. A further four specialised diplomas will follow in 2010, and an entitlement to all 14 will be in place in every local area by 2015.
	Employers will have never been so involved in designing the courses studied by our young people, guaranteeing that those qualifications add real value to young people's employment prospects. We will also involve universities in the design of level-3 diplomas to ensure that the young people who take them are ready for higher education.
	We must provide real opportunities for young people to be stretched to achieve their full potential. I expect all diplomas and A-levels to offer optional, more challenging questions for the brightest students. We will also pilot other measures to add stretch, including an extended project, as suggested by Sir Mike, and the use of HE modules in schools and colleges.
	Our top universities have told us that they need more information to differentiate among top achievers, especially for popular courses. I shall act immediately to make A-level unit results available to universities before they make offers of places. In the longer term, moving to post-qualification application to universities will mean that final A-level results and unit grades are available for all candidates.
	There are those who argue that we should challenge our A-level students further, by demanding breadth in the curriculum as well as stretch. Some schools in the state sector do that already by offering the international baccalaureate, often alongside A-levels. I understand those arguments, but there is no clear consensus among pupils, parents, employers or universities on whether or how it should be done. I also believe that so soon after the introduction of curriculum 2000, stability is important. I will therefore work with employers and universities to see whether we can identify what, if anything, would add value to A-levels, and I will review progress in 2008.
	Our education system has not done enough for those most at risk of dropping out of the system, resulting in pupils and society paying a high price. I believe that the key to remotivating those teenagers is to broaden the range of places in which they can learn. I shall enable pupils to mix school with college and employer-based learning to suit their needs. I shall introduce a new programme for 14 to 16-year-olds to provide intensive support to allow learning at work, based on our existing and successful entry to employment programme, which is currently available only to those over the age of 16.
	These measures are a radical package, which we will introduce with care, and schools, colleges, employers and other local partners will need to work together to deliver it, each contributing their own expertise for the benefit of all pupils in the area. In doing so, we will move from a system of comprehensive schools to a genuinely comprehensive system of education in each local area.
	I believe that every child has equal worth; that every child has potential; that the job of the education system is to develop and extend that potential; and that, in doing so, education must enable all children and teenagers to achieve and prepare for life and work, equipping them with the skills that employers need.
	There are many ways to achieve and many ways to prepare young people, all of which have dignity and value and all of which deserve respect. Those are my values, the values of this Government and, I believe, values that the whole country will share. This White Paper embraces those values. I commend it to the House.

Tim Collins: I thank the Secretary of State for allowing me to see a copy of her statement half an hour in advance. I would thank her for the chance to see a copy of the White Paper in advance, but sadly it did not arrive.
	Let us start on the points where there is consensus between us. We are agreed that A-levels and GCSEs should remain, but that they should be much more challenging for the most able. We are agreed that vocational education must be massively expanded and dramatically raised in status. We are agreed that no child who is able to learn to read and write should ever leave school without those fundamental skills. We are agreed that participation rates among older teenagers must rise at least to the levels seen in other countries. We are agreed, in short, that despite all the hard work of teachers, schools, pupils and parents, the current education system in Britain has been letting down far too many for far too long, right across the spectrum from the most to the least academic.
	We are also agreed, I am sure, that Mike Tomlinson and his team should be thanked. We would go further. We do not just thank him and his team, we congratulate him on a creative, important and imaginative report. Sadly, it seems that the Secretary of State came not to praise the Tomlinson report, but to bury it. Not one diploma for all, but at least 15 different diplomas for different categories of children; no new challenging qualification in literacy and numeracy; and no integration of academic and vocational qualifications. There is not much left of Tomlinson, is there?
	The Secretary of State told the Sunday papers categorically that she would make exams harder. Why, then, today did she just say that she would see if we can identify what, if anything, would add value to A-levels, and I will review progress in 2008? There was no commitment; after eight years, all we get is a promise to look at it all again in another three yearsall talk, yet again.
	Exams have not been getting harder in the last eight years, have they? The former chief examiner Tony Whelpton said:
	Yes, it is easier to get a good result at A level and GCSE than it used to be.
	Will the Secretary of State scrap the AS-level and the option to resit A-level modules over and over again? She has given the impression that she will get the present Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to make exams more challenging, but these are the very people who have allowed A-grades at GCSE to be handed out to candidates with just 45 per cent. of the marks and permitted a pass mark to be set at just 17 per cent. Will she confirm that she still has confidence in the very institutions that have debased our exam system? If she has, why should anyone believe that standards will get any higher at all?
	The Secretary of State says that she wants to raise the effective school-leaving age to 18. Let us examine whether that is a stunt or a real pledge. Is she undertaking to change the formal, legal school-leaving age set down by statuteyes or no? Teenage truancy has risen by a third since 1997. If she cannot keep 14 and 15-year-olds in school, why should anyone believe that she will be able to keep 17 and 18-year-olds there?
	The Secretary of State said that she wants to improve basic literacy and numeracy, but her statement on this is somewhat unclear. Is she accepting or rejecting the specific Tomlinson recommendation for a new and entirely separate assessment in literacy, numeracy and ICT that every child would have to pass before getting a diploma? Will she at last embrace the academic research from this country and around the world, which demonstrates unequivocally that by far the most effective way to spread literacy is to teach phonics?
	The Secretary of State claimed that literacy and numeracy have been improving under Labour. However, the independent Statistics Commission said only last week that
	the improvement in KS2 test scores between 1995 and 2000 substantially overstates the improvement in standards in English primary schools over that period . . . Government Departments have usually failed to mention any caveats . . . in their public comments.
	The Secretary of State did not mention any caveats in her public comments this afternoon.
	The National Audit Office reported two months ago that the number of adults without adequate literacy and numeracy skills is growing by 100,000 a year. The CBI says that one in three companies has to provide remedial training for school leavers who have not mastered reading, writing and arithmetic. In 2003, the CBI survey of 500 companies showed that 34 per cent. were not satisfied with the numeracy and literacy standards of 16-year-olds. In 2004, that figure rose to 37 per cent. Even someone who has learned maths under this Government knows that 37 per cent. is higher than 34 per cent. It is getting worse, not better, isn't it?
	The biggest disappointment today is that the Secretary of State has not accepted Tomlinson's central recommendation for an overarching diploma, embracing both academic and vocational qualifications, that every school leaver would be expected to get in at least some form.
	The Secretary of State and I agree that A-levels and GCSEs should remain clear and permanent parts of the system. Last year, there were cross-party talks on this issue and it was clear that agreement could have been reached that results at A-level and GCSE would be printed loud and clear on the front of the diploma. That would have preserved the integrity of those exams while still enabling other achievements in vocational qualifications, longer-term projects and basic skills to be properly recognised. Why instead[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis) must be quiet.

Tim Collins: Why instead[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Do not tell me what to do.

Tim Collins: Why instead has the Secretary of State chosen to set in stone the age-old British divide between academic and vocational qualifications that has bedevilled our society and economy for 150 years? Does she not realise that in the 21st century every child, perhaps especially the brightest, will need vocational as well as academic qualifications? How can she possibly expect to achieve parity of esteem if some young people obtain A-levels and others a diploma, and there is no overlap between the two?
	Why did the Secretary of State choose to throw away the chance for a consensus on the diploma? Why did she not build on the extensive efforts that Sir Mike Tomlinson himself made to try to reach very broad agreement? Why, when her predecessors issued invitations for discussions with other parties, did she not do the same? Of course, the teaching unions would not be happy with the view that both she and I take over A-levels, but they would have been a lot happier than they are today if she had delivered an overarching diploma, would they not?
	The Secretary of State chose to listen to members of the No. 10 policy unit rather than to her Department or to outside advice. She has thrown away the chance to get substantial agreement across parties and the education sector. She will not now be remembered as a great reformer. This was her first big test. She has flunked it.

Ruth Kelly: I found the hon. Gentleman's reply most entertaining, and his new-found enthusiasm for vocational education and training and a diploma a little surprising. But it is hard to take the hon. Gentleman seriously when his priorities for the state education system are to use 1 billion of taxpayers' money to subsidise the private education of an elite fewa sum equivalent to cutting more than 24,000 teachers and more than 22,000 classroom assistantsand when his proposals for driving up standards in schools are to slash the number of Ofsted inspections, so that a child could go the whole way through secondary school without that school being inspected.
	The hon. Gentleman's new-found conversion to a diploma just reminds me how opportunistic the Conservative party really is. Is his new proposal for a diploma also based on a return to selection at 11, or a return to selection at five, and a grammar school in every town? Far from agreeing that every child should be stretched to their full potential, he is preparing to cast us back to the past, when his party argued that standards are maintained only if a majority of children fail and a minority succeed. Far from transforming vocational education and training, he and his party would relegate vocational education to the second-class, second-best training that it was under their leadership. In 1997, there were 75,000 apprenticeships; today there are more than 250,000.
	The hon. Gentleman accuses the Government of not raising standards in primary schools. Let me tell the House what we have achieved in primary education. Everyone agrees that the increase in standards since 1998 has been dramatic. Even David Bell, the chief inspector, in his recent Ofsted report said that there have been significant improvements in literacy and numeracy standards since the introduction of the national strategies. In literacy, English 10-year-olds were the third most able readers out of 35 countries in recent international assessments, and between 1995 and 2005 standards in maths have risen faster than those in any other country. We have made progress. We have world-class standards in primary schools and record results in GCSEs and A-levels, but we have to go further. We must ensure that there is no cap on aspiration, no limit to a child's potential.
	The hon. Gentleman asks whether we will raise the school-leaving age to 18. The answer clearly is no. We want every child to want to stay in learning until they are 18 or 19 years old, because they have the chance, for once, to learn in a way that motivates them, in the place that motivates them, with real qualifications that have real currency with their parents, employers and our universities, including our top universities. If we manage to do that, we will really, once and for all, have bridged the vocational-academic divide.
	The hon. Gentleman asks whether we have accepted the Tomlinson proposals on English and maths and on functional literacy and numeracy. Yes, we have, and we have gone much further. We have made it a condition of getting the diploma that children not only achieve functional literacy and numeracy, but continue from the age of 11 to be given real stretch, and also space for catch-up in English and maths, until they reach the required standard. Our new proposals for the GCSE diploma will have English and maths at their heart. We will also change the league tables to ensure that English and maths are a component of their five A to C grades. We are toughening English and maths to ensure that children who achieve high grades have a real grasp of literacy and numeracy.
	I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes our proposals, because this is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform standards and increase opportunities. The proposals provide, not just at GCSE, a much greater focus on the basics, but real stretch, in vocational as well as academic subjects. We will continue to keep that under review to see how much stretch we can provide, offering additional extension papers at A-level, offering the opportunity to all children to study HE modules at school, and introducing the extended project recommended by Sir Mike Tomlinson. We will see if we need to go further by looking at breadth in the curriculum as well as stretch.
	The proposals are a radical reform that should be welcomed across the political spectrum. We have done a lot, but there is a lot more to do. I want a society in which people with ambition are not thought to be getting above themselves, and in which children from all backgrounds have high aspirations. I commend the proposals to the House.

Phil Willis: I thank the Secretary of State for the courtesy of providing an advance copy of her statement today.
	I always try to begin on occasions such as this by welcoming something in the statement, but to be perfectly honest that has been quite difficult today. However, Liberal Democrats welcome the move to post-qualification applications to university. When does the Secretary of State expect to introduce that, because it needs to be quick, and the universities must not stand in the way? Tomlinson was clear that we should also be raising the bar in terms of literacy, numeracy and ICT for post-16-year-olds. Will that be included?
	We also welcome the emphasis on maths and English, a commitment on which all would agree. Does the Secretary of State agree that she must now abandon the league tables, which concentrate on five A to C grades, and that instead, any information on student performance at 16 from the Government should show whether students have achieved a level 2 in English, maths and ICT as a prerequisite, and we should abandon the idea of getting a GNVQ, building up four equivalent GCSEs and including that in the Government's success targets?
	Will the Secretary of State explain what she means by a genuine comprehensive system of education in every area? Does that mean that there will be no comprehensive schools, but a combination of other schools that make up a comprehensive package, or does it mean abandoning grammar and other schools as well?
	From the outset, we have supported the Government's fundamental desire to increase the vocational offer, to extend the time that students spend in education and training and to make demands on our brighter students. We are with the Government on that. Indeed, Mike Tomlinson recommended all those things in his report. However, it went one step further. For the first time in my professional lifeindeed, in my lifetimeit brought together the academic and vocational strands. The Government appear to have abandoned that fundamental principle at the heart of Mike Tomlinson's proposals.
	There has been huge consensus about the Tomlinson proposals. When the only major figure who stands against them is the former chief inspector of schools, Chris Woodhead, we know that Tomlinson must be right. However, instead of supporting the spirit of Tomlinson, the Secretary of State has cherry-picked the proposals and thus undermined their integrity. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said on 12 January on Today:
	New Labour is best when it is radical.
	If today's statement reflects what he meant by that, God help us, because it represents not radicalism but reaction.
	Does not the Secretary of State realise that continuing to separate GCSEs and A-levels from the vocational offer perpetuates the very division that Tomlinson hoped to bridge? How does she intend to create parity of esteem between academic and vocational programmes now that the diploma in its entirety has been rejected? How will she encourage academically able young people to take up vocational options when she has effectively described the vocational diploma

Tim Collins: Diplomas.

Phil Willis: The hon. Gentleman is right. How will the Secretary of State encourage students to take up the diplomas when she effectively described them as for the disaffected and academically less able?
	Given that the proposals are to cover all young people in the 14 to 19 age group, how will they affect the NEETnot in education, employment or traininggroup or the 15 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds who are in work but not in training? Where do part-time learners fit into the proposals? They were not mentioned once in the statement. What proposals does the Secretary of State have for extending a statutory right to time off to 16 to 19-year-olds? Without that, her promise of extending education to the age of 19 is an empty gesture.
	Where are the funding proposals? Those are of fundamental interest to schools and colleges. I asked the Secretary of State in October

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is asking a long question. [Interruption.] Yes, it is very interesting. Perhaps the Secretary of State can now reply to the hon. Gentleman, who can follow up with parliamentary questions.

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman has asked me many questions, which I shall do my best to answer in the time available. We intend to introduce post-qualification application by 2010. We are raising the bar on literacy and numeracy, which are a condition of attaining a specialised diploma or a GCSE diploma. The diplomas will have to include English and maths, and it will not be possible to progress to level 3 without literacy and numeracy. I assure him that we shall change the league table to include English and maths. That is a key component of our proposals.
	The hon. Gentleman asked what a truly comprehensive system would look like. I envisage schools working together in networks with colleges and employers to deliver what every child needs to meet their requirements so that they can learn in a way that suits their motivations, taps their aptitudes and enables them to develop to their full potential.
	The hon. Gentleman said that there was consensus about abolishing GCSEs and A-levels. That is not what teachers, parents and children in school tell me. He asked how we could break down the academic/vocational divide. Vocational, specialised lines of learning will include A-levels and GCSEs when relevant, and practical subjects taught in practical ways, so that children can learn in a way that motivates them. They will provide qualifications with genuine currency that employers and universities respect, just as A-levels and GCSEs are currently respected. If qualifications are genuinely recognised and valued in their own right, because we value skilled technicians, software designers and engineers, that is the way to achieve parity of esteem.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to my use of the word disaffected. He misunderstood my proposals. There will be a new route for people who are at risk of dropping out. It goes way beyond the Tomlinson recommendations. We propose a new route for those who, at 14, are at risk of disengaging from the system. It is based on our current entry to employment route for over-16s. That will be extended to 14 to 16-year-olds so that they can spend up to two days a week learning in the workplace as well as the classroom. They can then come back to learning after doing their level 1 or level 2 diploma. That is a radical departure from the current system, and it will extend genuine benefits to all our pupils.

Phil Willis: Part-timers?

Ruth Kelly: The thrust of my proposals is that students should learn skills on which they can build and progress in work as well as school so that the qualifications that they gain in school will lead to progression later in life. I have outlined a radical set of proposals.

Barry Sheerman: The statement is much better than many of us anticipated until a short time ago. My right hon. Friend knows that many of us would have preferred Tomlinson, the whole Tomlinson and nothing but   Tomlinson, but we are all realists, and there is much of Tomlinson in her proposals.
	Let me clear up a minor point. Tomlinson never advocated the abolition of GCSEs and A-levels as a requirement for introducing a diploma. Page 33 of the report specifically states that GCSEs and A-levels are compatible with a radical change.
	My right hon. Friend knows that most of us hold dear the prospect of sorting out the academic and vocational divide once and for all. Much in the statement deals with that. I disagree with her about one thing. There is a consensus that I have not previously experienced on the need to sort out the 14 to 19 situation, and we have a unique opportunity to do that. I therefore hope that she will listen to comments about the White Paper and ensure that we get it absolutely right and thus challenge the aspirations and future of our young people.

Ruth Kelly: I thank my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee. I know that he takes a great interest in these matters and that he has followed the subject closely. He is right that a consensus exists, but I do not think that it is about the abolition of A-levels or GCSEs or the way in which we meet objectives. The consensus is that we need to do more to tackle the basics and ensure that every child is literate and numerate on leaving school. There is also a consensus that we need to do more to stretch our most able students and to transform radically the nature of vocational opportunities for our students. I believe that the package that I proposed fulfils those tests.

Ian Taylor: I welcome the wider encouragement of literacy and numeracy and working with employers that the White Paper proposes. However, I am especially concerned about the decline in the number of A-level students who take individual science subjects. What does the White Paper do to encourage that? What does it propose to stimulate people beyond the age of 13 and subsequently beyond the age of GCSEs to take those subjects and go on to university? Has the Secretary of State considered, for example, increasing the weighting of individual science subjects in university applications?

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the importance of science and of ensuring that we have enough students who are motivated and inspired by the science curriculum and want to study science, not only for GCSE but for A-level and at university. He knows that our proposals to maintain compulsory science at key stage 4 will be introduced in 2006. They will create a platform on which to make the science curriculum more inspiring, as the Roberts review proposed. I firmly expect at least 80 per cent. of students to study the equivalent of two science subjects at GCSE, and more to go on to study science at A-level.
	I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that we have a platform on which to invest for the future and deliver enough scientists both to employment and to our university system.

Helen Southworth: Great Sankey high school in my constituency, a specialist engineering college, and the employers and trade unions working with it, are keen to see a focus on engineering. Will my right hon. Friend work with universities to ensure that they recognise the importance of the subject? We need students at every level to contribute to our society and community, so that we can really succeed in engineering.

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the importance of engineering. One specialised route will indeed lead to an engineering diploma. I think that if we get the content right by working with universities and employers, weor theycan design courses that will stretch our most able engineering students and provide them with direct routes to our top universities. It will be a test of our reforms: can we really create qualifications that combine conceptual with practical learning, and are recognised and respected by employers and the university system?

John Redwood: What should Bracknell and Wokingham further education college do about its great difficulty in recruiting people to teach electricians and plumbers, given the current salary and funding levels? We have people who want to train as electricians and plumbers; we have colleges that want to give them places. What are the Government going to do about the problem of recruiting the teachers?

Ruth Kelly: Delivering that agenda will pose a challenge to all our institutions: schools, employers, the FE sector, local authorities and learning and skills councils. I do not deny that for a moment. It also gives the FE sector a huge opportunity to build on its current strengths and its excellent record of delivering vocational skills, but the sector must nevertheless rise to that challengewhich is one reason why we commissioned Sir Andrew Foster to undertake a thorough review to ensure that the sector is fit for the purpose of delivering such an exciting agenda.

Robert Jackson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the belief that parity of esteem can be generated by a single formal structure of formal qualifications is simply too mechanistic? Surely a better route to it is the pursuit of higher levels of individual attainment and ambition in both academic and vocational studies.
	Will my right hon. Friend tell us something about the relationship between her proposals and the promotion of two-year vocational foundation degrees at universities, which is such an important step for the future?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that we must continue to raise standards in our schools and colleges, but also raise the ambitions and aspirations of all our young people. That is what my proposals set out to doand yes, we should have diplomas designed by employers and leading directly to university foundation degrees.
	It may become much easier for young people to go to university when they have qualifications that are recognised by employers and the university system. That is how to achieve parity of esteem between the academic and vocational.

Roy Beggs: Which of the initiatives that the Secretary of State has announced will apply to Northern Ireland, and do the Government intend to introduce a genuinely comprehensive education system to the Province?

Ruth Kelly: We will obviously go on working with those in Northern Ireland to see how the arrangements might apply to them, but I can confirm that the proposals I have announced apply to England.

George Mudie: I welcome the attempt to raise standards, but as an inner-city Member I see inner-city teachers and pupils struggling because of such factors as background. Changes in systems are fine, but does the Secretary of State accept that it is impossible to reach the standards of which she speaks in inner cities unless inner-city schools, with all their genuine and long-lasting problems, are given the same resources as leafy-lane suburban schools? Is there anything about that in the White Paper?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the need for more investment in the inner cities. Our excellence in cities initiative has already driven up standards in participating areas. My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to the practical challenge of delivering that agenda, but we have seen examples of its being done. In Knowsley, for instance, schools have been working in networks with employers and the FE sector to give young people an opportunity to take up apprenticeships. We have seen their motivation increase and their standards rise. We have seen the agenda work in practice, and now we must ensure that it is delivered throughout the country.

Sydney Chapman: I listened carefully to the statement. Near the beginning, the right hon. Lady said unequivocally that our education system had been failing the majority. Does she really believe that? If so, it is an appalling indictment of her predecessors and, perhaps, of those who work in the system, including my daughter. Surely the right hon. Lady should have said that the education system had been failing too many pupils, and addressed herself to that problem rather than trying to make that statement embrace the vast majority.

Ruth Kelly: There are always some who argue that the best education system is one that creates and fosters an elite. I do not agree. I think we should aspire to much more. We have raised standardsmore than half our young people gain five A to C grades at higher levelsbut too many people are left drifting at 14, too many are defined by failure at 16, and too many drop out of the system altogether at 17. The challenge that we must address is an historic weakness in our education system, and I believe that this is the way in which to address it.

Eric Joyce: As my right hon. Friend will know, the new higher still structure in Scotland works extremely well in tandem with the traditional Scottish variants of A-levels and GCSEs, highers and standards. Does she agree that we can learn a good deal from that positive experience?

Ruth Kelly: Yes, I do. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the Scottish experience, and Wales has also had an interesting experience in this regard. We must learn from what works, but it is just as important for us to work with employers and the higher education sector to establish whether we can add value to our existing A-level system. It is clear to me, and there is a clear consensus, that we must add opportunities for stretchthere are children who could do more than they are doing nowbut there may also be opportunities for breadth, which is why we are piloting the extended project proposed by Sir Mike Tomlinson. I will work with the HE sector and employers to discover whether they would like more stretch than the current system offers.

John Pugh: The Secretary of State seems to think that breadth, as well as the ubiquitous stretch, is a good thing, but I think I am being fair when I say that her statement implied that she does not have a clue how to achieve it. Is that a fair prcis?

Ruth Kelly: I have made it absolutely clear that HE modules and the extended project give us ways of offering A-level students more. We will also test advanced extension awards in A-levels, which will give students a real opportunity to show their potential. There is, however, no clear consensus in the higher education sector or among employers on whether pupils should do more than the current A-level system offerswhether they should study a broader range of subjects alongside their A-level subjects. I want to work with universities and employers to establish what, if anything, could add value to the studies that pupils currently pursue.

Anne Campbell: Cambridge is one of the universities that has called for greater discrimination between students getting top A-level grades. Their wish will not be completely satisfied by making A-level unit results available to universities before they make their offers. Can my right hon. Friend outline some of the measures that she will take to ensure that there is greater discrimination, particularly between students who are getting three As at A-level?

Ruth Kelly: Some universities do indeed say that because 3.5 per cent. of students now achieve three A grades at A-level, they want to be able to discriminate between those students. I have responded to that in my proposals. I will act immediately to make unit grades available at AS-level, so that that information will be available to universities before they make offers. Once PQA comes in, it will be possible to provide unit results and marks at A-level as well as AS-level. However, universities are also interested in seeing whether they can use the scholarship, self-study, research and softer skills that are acquired in doing the extended project as a basis on which to differentiate between pupils. Therefore, we will test the extended project and HE modules in schools, too. I am sure that universities will be interested in those.

Julie Kirkbride: The Secretary of State's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor) was a bit of a cop-out. She must be aware that there is a collapse in the number of students taking pure science at university. The principal reason is that not enough pupils take chemistry, biology and physics at GCSE. Instead they are pushed into combined sciences. What specifically will she do in the area of science to increase both stretch and breadth, which she has said so much about, because that needs to be done as a matter of urgency?

Ruth Kelly: I agree that we need to motivate more students as a matter of urgency, which is why we have worked with the science community to review the science curriculum at key stage 4. Those changes will be in place by 2006, so we have recognised the urgent need to get more students to be motivated by science both at key stage 3 and at key stage 4 and to continue with it. We are taking science seriously. As a result, 80 per cent. of students will continue to take at least two science GCSEs and we will see more students continuing to pursue science as a career option after they have done their GCSEs.

Keith Vaz: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement and congratulate her on what she said, but will she confirm that the Government's policy towards faith-based schools has not changed, that schools such as the Islamic school in Leicester, St. Paul's Catholic school and the Swaminarayan Hindu Mission school in north London will continue to receive Government support and will be acknowledged as part of the education system of this country?

Ruth Kelly: Of course I can confirm to my hon. Friend that the position has not changed and that those schools will make a valuable addition to our education system. In delivering this agenda, they will have to be able to work with other schools in their local area. I see it as a fundamental part of these reforms that we open up schools to work in partnership with one another to deliver an all-round education that meets the needs of every pupil.

Paul Holmes: I was a secondary school teacher for 22 years, mostly in comprehensive schools. The problem with vocational courses was always that they were seen as second best. Only this morning, the new vice-chancellor of Oxford university confirmed in the Education and Skills Committee that that university has no intention of and no interest in admitting students with vocational qualifications. Will the Secretary of State think again about rejecting the key part of Tomlinson, as otherwise the vocational diplomas will go the same way as the GNVQ, the BTEC, the CPVE and all the rest?

Ruth Kelly: Of course, at that point the vice-chancellor did not have the opportunity to study these proposals and he did not know that the new specialised diplomas will include A-levels and GCSEs where appropriate. An engineering diploma, for example, could include A-level maths or an advanced optional paper at the end of A-level maths, where a student can show their potential. If we design these advanced level diplomas in specialised subjects together with HE, for the first time, HE will have a real say in what pupils learn. As a result, the qualifications will be taken seriously. That is what employers and HE have been telling us.

Brian Jenkins: My right hon. Friend will be aware that at present a comprehensive system is in operation in my constituency. I have six comprehensive schools and one college, which work as a consortium. It is the intention from September to convert one of the comprehensive schools into a skills academy. We have almost everything on board, but we need a little extra money to ensure that there is parity of esteem as regards the equipment in the skills academy. We have a conference in March to try to get more business people on board. We have many; we are trying to attract more. Will she accept the offer of being top of the bill at that conference?

Ruth Kelly: How could I ever refuse my hon. Friend? I know that he has been pursuing this matter. He has brought to my attention and to that of my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards the practical experience of his constituency. We can all learn from practical experiences such as the ones that the pupils in his constituency are lucky enough to be having. We must now ensure that all our youngsters have that opportunity.

Henry Bellingham: On page seven of her statement, the Secretary of State talks about the first four employer-designed diplomas. She then mentions sectors such as engineering, health and social care, and talks about large companies, but most of the companies in those sectors are small and medium-sized, or very small. How will she engage small firms organisations to get their contribution?

Ruth Kelly: I mentionedthe hon. Gentleman may be interested in thisthat the NHS is very keen on taking part in these proposals. It is one of the largest employers not just in this country but in Europe. I also mentioned that IBM, Hewlett Packard and Rolls-Royce are very keen to get involved too. We want small firms to be included too. In fact, they will be essential to delivering our new route for 14 to 16-year-olds, which will, I hope, remotivate children who are at risk of dropping out of the system entirely. I am delighted to say that Digby Jones, head of the Confederation of British Industry, has said that he will work with us in trying to attract employers to get involved in the education system, so that more and more young people have the opportunity to work not just in vocational subjects but in the workplace, learning in the way that most motivates them.

Khalid Mahmood: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, particularly in relation to vocational education. I welcome too the investment that her Department has made in my constituency. I thank her and her predecessor for the investment of 45 million in a PFI school, which is working brilliantly. Children were working in huts before that. I welcome her commitment of 5 million for the new Kingsland school in Oscott, which is to be completed in 2007. Will she, in order to meet the commitment to increase staying-on rates by 90 per cent., allow Great Barr school, the largest in the country, to have a proper sixth form, so that such rates can be achieved?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that many successful schools want to expand to open sixth forms, which is one of the reasons why there should be a presumption that successful schools that want to open sixth forms should be allowed to have them. That is also something that will be central to achieving our proposals.

Damian Green: I hope that the Secretary of State sticks to her guns in rejecting the notion that by re-badging vocational qualifications as academic qualifications, one thereby raises the esteem of vocational qualifications. It is the quality of the vocational education on offer that raises the esteem. Can she clear up one ambiguity? Will the work-based route for those over the age of 14 be available only to those whom she described as disaffected, or will it be available to those who show a particular aptitude in some vocational skill, who could clearly benefit from it hugely?

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman makes some important points. One does not achieve parity of by esteem by offering the same to all. One achieves it by offering something that is valued and worth while in its own right, and that is recognised in my proposals. For 14 to 16-year-olds who are at risk of dropping out of the system, the route will clearly involve employers, but those children who are motivated by learning in the workplace, in an FE college or in a practical way in another setting should also have the opportunity to be motivated and to learn in that different place and in that different way. We will work with employers to open up opportunities for everyone who would benefit from that experience to work in the workplace.

Helen Jones: While I welcome much of what my right hon. Friend has said today, as a Member of the House and a parent, I am deeply disappointed that she has not taken the opportunity to implement the whole of the Tomlinson report, which is about broadening and enriching the curriculum, not just about dealing with vocational and academic divisions. What funding streams will she introduce to ensure that schools do not have a vested interest in ensuring that children go either one way or the other, and what assessment has she made of the training requirements necessary to implement the structures for vocational education and the extra teaching in English and maths as well as the major project?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend makes some interesting points. May I tell her that we will return to the theme of broadening and enriching the curriculum over the remaining weeks and months? I shall have a lot to say about that. On Mike Tomlinson's report, we are implementing the extended project that he recommended, which will provide an opportunity for students to demonstrate their potential in a different way from the current approaches.
	My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to potential barriers in the funding system between schools and further education colleges. Learning and skills councils will have to work flexibly with local authorities to deliver in practice. I can tell her that, where it is in practice at the moment, it works. We have real practical experience of seeing delivery happen. We know it can be done: it will be a challenge not just to overcome the barriers but to train the work force to deliver the skills in an appropriate way. We must face those challenges head on, and we will overcome them to deliver this agenda.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Speaker: Order. It would be unfair of me not to call the remaining Members who wish to speak, but I must appeal to them and tell them that their questions must be brief, because the rules of the House recommend that ministerial statements end after an hour.

Nick Gibb: The Secretary of State's decision to reject Tomlinson is welcomeif, indeed, that is what she is doing. It is refreshing to see a Minister who does not slavishly follow the advice of the education establishment. I hope that she will adopt the same approach to the teaching of reading and writing in primary schools, but I am concerned about her intention to introduce a diploma for those with five or more good GCSEs, as many of the most damaging proposals in Tomlinson may still be implemented. Will she give an assurance that she will rule out the Tomlinson proposal to reduce external examination at the age of 16 and replace it by more teacher assessment? Will she categorically rule

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot have heard what Mr. Speaker just said.

Ruth Kelly: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the hon. Gentleman does talk some common sense and it is a pleasure for me to answer him. He is right that we cannot roll back on accountability; that we cannot roll back on existing mechanisms for achieving standards; and that we must ensure that we place an emphasis on literacy and numeracy in primary schools, then continuing from the age of 11. We are going way beyond Tomlinson in considering the 11 to 14 curriculum as well as the 14 to 19 curriculum, so right from the word go there is space for catch-up on the basics of reading and writing. We will make getting that right a priority. If children are to have a real opportunity to benefit at 14, they must be educated by 14.

David Chaytor: I welcome my right hon. Friend's analysis of the weaknesses of our current system, as I welcome much in her statement, particularly her rehabilitation of the concept of comprehensive education. Is she now placing the pupil's choice of different curricular pathways at the age of 14 at the heart of our system, and if so, is that not increasingly incompatible with our admissions system, which still allows schools to choose which pupils to admit at the age of 11? In giving further consideration to the development of proposals, will she return to consider that matter?

Ruth Kelly: I certainly think that it would be disastrous if we were to introduce selection at the age of five, which is the policy of the Conservative party. It will become more and more important as we develop this agenda for schools to work together in partnership to offer not just academic options but vocational and more practical ways of learning. They will have to work together in networks to deliver, and I suspect that each area will deliver a common prospectus for all students in the area, with the various options available to them at the age of 14. We will also need an intensive system of advice and guidance before that happens, to ensure that children really take the options that best meet their needs.

Andrew Turner: The Secretary of State's statement will go down well with the smarter tabloids, as it favours comprehensive systems over comprehensive schools, it is more Woodhead than Tomlinson, and it keeps A-levels and GCSEs. However, will she respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb), who asked about assessment? Will GCSEs be externally assessed or will there be a drift, as Tomlinson recommended, towards more internal assessments?

Ruth Kelly: I am sorry if I did not answer the question earlier, and I can confirm that there will be no moving away from external assessment of GCSEs and A-levels. Standards are here to stay and we want more students to continue to meet them. We also want to open up opportunities across the board so that more children can achieve their potential.

David Rendel: Before the Secretary of State announced her policy of insisting that pupils needed A to C grades in maths and English to be counted in the league tables, she must have had some estimate of the difference that it would make. Will she remind us what proportion of pupils gained five A to C grades this year, and what the proportion would have been if the new policy had already been in place?

Ruth Kelly: I can tell the hon. Gentleman that this year 53.7 per cent. of pupils gained five A to C grades at GCSE, up from 45.1 per cent. in 1997. Had the new system been in place, 42.6 per cent. of pupils would have achieved a new diploma, compared with 35.6 per cent. in 1997.

Banking Practices (Protection of the Elderly)

Julian Lewis: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require banks to adopt and maintain specific practices in dealing with vulnerable elderly clients at risk from certain financial arrangements by institutions and from other forms of exploitation by individuals.
	This Bill would have three provisions. The first is to ban ATM cash machine charges for pensioners who are in the process of gaining access to the accounts in which they are now obliged to receive their pensions. The second is that banks that operated the ill-fated shared appreciation mortgage schemes in the 1990s, which left elderly people unable to sell their homes without giving three quarters of the increase in their value to the banks, should be declared inequitable. The debt should be rescheduled to impose only a reasonable rate of interest on those loans. I have a direct interest in the third provision, which is that banks should have in place software that will automatically alert account managers, cashiers and, where appropriate, relatives and carers of elderly people, to untypically large or frequent withdrawals being made from a vulnerable client's accountirrespective of whether they are made personally by the account holder. The purpose is to improve safeguards against the activities of con men and other criminals who prey on the vulnerable and the suggestible.
	The first provision is self-explanatory. It has been pointed out to me by Terry Cassels, the chief officer of Age Concern in Essex, that some cash machines charge as much as 5 per transaction for a pensioner to withdraw his or her own pension. That can amount to approximately 5 per cent. of what they receive. That is obviously unsatisfactory. It results from the bringing into being of a system that many pensioners did not want in the first place, and I would have thought that it should be made a condition of any cash machine being placed in a bank, whether owned by the bank itself or by another company working within the bank, that pensioners be exempted from any such charge.
	The second provision of my Bill is more complex. Shared appreciation mortgage schemes were offered between April 1996 and July 1998, by Barclays bank and the then Bank of Scotland, which subsequently merged with the Halifax. About 15,000 people remain trapped in those arrangements.
	I shall give some examples, without identifying the people concerned, from among my constituents. Mr. C. borrowed 44,000 in 1998, but must pay back 180,000 only six years later. Mr. T. borrowed 36,000 in 1998 and must now pay back 152,000. Such massive repayments arise from the nature of the gamble that people took in embarking on these schemes. Instead of paying an agreed rate of interest on the loans, borrowers undertook that three quarters of the increase in the value of their property when it was soldeither by them or by the people to whom they left itwould go to the bank in lieu of interest.
	We all know what happenedthe value of houses shot up. As a result, the sums that must be repaid are grossly disproportionate to what a reasonable interest rate would have required. The daughter of another of my constituents, Mr. B., said that
	surely if a lending company were to charge this they would be considered to be a loan shark and would be treated accordingly. I find it impossible to believe that a High Street Bank can carry on in this manner.
	I wrote to the Barclays bank group chief executive, Matthew Barratt, suggesting that the bank might surprise me, agree to reschedule the loans, and make available to the borrowers interest requirements proportionate to the amount of money borrowed. Sure enough, I got nowhere. I was told that the people involved had taken a risk and that the bank's shareholders could have lost out because the value of property might not have risen. The fact that new Financial Services Authority rules meant that such schemes would not be allowed was never mentioned, nor the fact that the schemes were wound up after only a couple of years.
	Another factor needs to be considered. It is a falsehood for the banks to say that they did not know that property values were likely to rise. I am grateful to Miss Margaret Borwick, a specialist in these matters, who sent me a copy of an article that appeared in the February 1997 edition of the publication Housing Finance, which is the quarterly digest of the Council of Mortgage Lenders. The article shows that the value of property was forecast to increase by 9 per cent. in 1997, and by 7 per cent. in 1998. Both Barclays bank and the Bank of Scotland were members of the council at the time.
	I come to the third and final provision of the Bill. I refer to an Adjournment debate that I held on 11 December 2003, about the activities of Mr. Paul Grey, a rogue builder in Swansea who managed to fleece my father out of 7,500 in cash withdrawals for building work that was never done. Subsequently, he admitted to me in a late-night telephone conversation laced with anti-Semitic abuse that he had been doing that sort of thing for 20 years and that there was nothing that people like me could do about it.
	My proposal is simple, and has to do with the arrangements currently used by credit card companies to cover the situation when a personlike myself, or you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, or any other hon. Membermakes an untypically large withdrawal from an account. Straight away, we receive telephone calls asking us, Was that really you? The amount being withdrawn seems untypical.
	A similar arrangement should be in place for vulnerable elderly customers at risk of being conned by rogues like Paul Grey. I warned Lloyds bank in Swansea that I was afraid that my father would take out money to pay a builder when he should not. When such a warning is given in other cases, it ought to alert the people running the relevant branch that an untypical payment might occur.
	I have had extensive argument and consultation with Lloyds bank on the matter. Although staff made a note on the bank's computerised database that they would ring me if they suspected that something was going on, they failed to do so because no automatic mechanism existed to alert tellers or initiate the warning process when my poor father started to withdraw money.
	A recent agreement has tried to make banks and cashiers more alert to the dangers posed by con men. However, I am not satisfied, from my dealings with either Lloyds bank in the one case or Barclays bank in the other, that banks can be relied on to act without being forced to do so. That is why I have brought forward the Bill.
	I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Dr. Julian Lewis, Mr. Nigel Evans, Mr. Martin Salter, Andrew Selous, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Michael Fabricant, Mr. Mike Hancock, Mr. David Amess, Mr. Gordon Marsden, Mr. Desmond Swayne, Mr. David Chidgey and John Robertson.

Banking Practices (Protection of the Elderly)

Dr. Julian Lewis accordingly presented a Bill to require banks to adopt and maintain specific practices in dealing with vulnerable elderly clients at risk from certain financial arrangements by institutions and from other forms of exploitation by individuals: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 8 April, and to be printed [Bill 65].

Point of Order

Patrick Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I mentioned to Mr. Speaker that I would raise this point before the debate on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, because he has overall responsibility for security in the House. Over the past year we have had to introduce new security measures. Some of them, like the screen in front of the Public Gallery, are immediately apparent to visitors, while others, such as the fact that every taxi that comes here is searched, are apparent to those who frequent the Members' entrance.
	In spite of all that, four Members of the House accept all its privileges but take no part in proceedings. They refuse to swear the oath of allegiance, and have known and fully established terrorist links. We are moving towards introducing very severe measures to restrict terrorists' activities. Surely it would be appropriate for Mr. Speaker to exercise his authority and forbid those people to be near the Westminster premises.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice that he wished to raise this matter, with a view to putting it on the record for Mr. Speaker's consideration. However, I think that Mr. Speaker would want to be aware of the views of the whole House in a matter of that kind.

Orders of the Day
	  
	Prevention of Terrorism Bill

[Relevant documents: Memorandums laid before the Constitutional Affairs Committee on the Operation of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC), HC323-II, Session 200405]
	Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have to announce to the House that Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the names of the Leader of the Opposition and of the leader of the Liberal Democrat party. He has also placed a 15-minute limit on speeches by Back-Bench Members in the debate.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The core of the case for this legislation is that this country faces substantial and real threats to the freedoms of institutions and people in our society that are qualitatively different since 11 September 2001. Despite this country's long experience over decades of terrorism of different kinds in relation to Ireland and anti-colonial struggles of various descriptions, the nature of the threat that we now face is of a qualitatively different order and, in my opinion, requires qualitatively different measures.
	Al-Qaeda and its network are qualitatively different in five ways that I shall set out to the House. First, their ideology is entirely destructive in nature. They wish to destroy religious toleration and tolerance; they wish to destroy freely elected democratic government; they wish to destroy the rule of law in our society; they wish to destroy free discussion and freedom of opinion in the media and elsewhere; they wish to destroy equality for women; they wish to destroy our market economy. The destruction of those things and values for which we and our predecessors in the House have fought for centuries is qualitatively different from terrorism of different types in the past when individuals fought for particular freedoms, as they saw it, in certain circumstances. Al-Qaeda and its colleagues seek to impose on us a nihilist regime.

Peter Lilley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: I shall do so in a moment, when I have made the essence of my argument.
	Al-Qaeda and its network are qualitatively different in their destructive character. Secondly, they are distinctive in the cataclysmic and catastrophic lack of restraint in the measures that they use. They are prepared to use biological, chemical and nuclear warfare to poison water supplies and to destroy whole systems of lifemass murder that is utterly different in its scale and impact from any previous terrorism. Thirdly, they are qualitatively different, because they are prepared to combine mass murder, violence and a cataclysmic approach with a suicidalI use the word advisedlyreadiness to commit such crimes. Suicide and martyrdom are not unique in the history of fights of this kindwhat is unique is the combination of suicide and the readiness to commit suicide with the mass murder that they seek to commit. That, I believe, requires different measures from us.
	The fourth difference is particularly important and needs to be well understood. The capability, resources and capacity of terrorist organisations around al-Qaeda, their ambition and sophisticated operation are of an utterly different order in terms of lawbreaking from their predecessor organisations. The final qualitatively different characteristic of that organisation is its global reach. There have been terrorist acts on an enormous scale: in the US itself on 9/11; in Africa, in Tunisia, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco; in Asia, in Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey; in the middle east, in Saudi Arabia and Yemen; and in Europe during the general election campaign in Spain. This terrorism therefore has a global reach of a different order.

Peter Lilley: I do not demur from the point that the Home Secretary is making, but is there anything in the Bill that limits or restricts the use of the qualitatively different powers that he is seeking to those who indulge just in this extreme form of terrorism, or are they available for use against any kind of terrorism that he may choose?

Charles Clarke: The derogation powers in the Bill require the Secretary of State to put before both Houses of Parliament an assertion or order stating that there is a threat to the nation from international terrorism. Such a derogation could not be made unless both Houses were convinced of the merit of that case. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman and the House that the Government would propose such a derogation only against international terrorism with the characteristics that I have just described.

Edward Leigh: No one denies that al-Qaeda wants to destroy democratic debate, but is it not then all the more important that in changing practice that has existed in this country for 800 years we have sufficient parliamentary time to do so? All the arguments could be put and, as far as possible, we should proceed by consensus. Would the right hon. Gentleman at least agree to that?

Charles Clarke: I certainly agree with the desirability of proceeding by consensus, and that is what I have sought to do, both before my statement to the House on 26 January and in subsequent discussions. Let us not equate the perfectly legitimate case that the hon. Gentleman made for sufficient time for parliamentary debate, which is part of the conventions of the House, with al-Qaeda's determination to destroy Parliament itself.

Helen Jackson: My right hon. Friend described well the international nature of the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaeda and others. I agree that it is distinctly different from the domestic threat, particularly against Westminster, from the IRA in the past. What international endorsement has he sought and received from Europe or further afield for the particular proposals that he is asking us to endorse over the next few days?

Charles Clarke: I am grateful that my hon. Friend accepts the qualitatively different nature of the terrorist threat. The G8, the European Union and the Council of Europe have clear and well-established positions on terrorism with which we work, and we have discussed these issues with the Justice and Home Affairs Council of the European Union. As for endorsementmy hon. Friend's wordof our measures, that has not been delivered by those organisations, because we do not live in a regime of world government in relation to such issues, which are for different nations to address individually.

Jeremy Corbyn: If the Home Secretary has an enormous body of evidence against individuals who are about to prepare a monstrous attack, surely it is up to him to bring a prosecution against them in the courts in the normal way. The concern of many people both inside and outside the House is that he is seeking powers for Executive control and detention that are outwith all our democratic traditions.

Charles Clarke: I shall come on to that detailed point in a second, but I agree with my hon. Friendand it is the Government's policy, as I have set out on a number of occasionsthat prosecution in the courts and conviction for particular offences are the most desirable course of action.

David Trimble: I thank the Home Secretary for his generosity, and urge him to reconsider the limitation that he put on the actions that he could take. Surely, the issue is whether there is something that poses a threat to the life of the nation and whether there is an emergency. That emergency and threat could come from a range of sources, and he should not fetter himself too much at this stage.

Charles Clarke: I agree completely with the right hon. Gentleman, who states the case correctly. In my answer to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), I said that at the moment the state of emergency or threat to the life of the nation that would require a derogation is focused on international terrorism from al-Qaeda and related organisations. However, I completely accept the point made by the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) that in theory and practice it is perfectly possible that terrorist threats of other kinds might arise.

Lembit �pik: I have listened with great interest to the Minister, but he seems to be in danger of generating a league table of terrorism in which paramilitary killings in Northern Ireland are not regarded as just as bad as killings by al-Qaeda. I am sure that he does not intend to give that impression, but why does he think that it is right for the Government to attempt to dispel the motives for terrorism in Northern Ireland when, by contrast, he is intent on using the suppression of the opportunity to terrorise as the sole method for acting against international terrorism?

Charles Clarke: I would not dream of doing that, and the suggestion of league tables in this area is deeply offensive. My argument, which has been widely made, is that 9/11 changed things, the existence of al-Qaeda and its related organisations changed things and, therefore, it is incumbent on the Government and the House to address that change.

Frank Field: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: I want to make more progress, but I will give way later.
	As I said, the five qualities that I set out, concluding with global reach, show that al-Qaeda is qualitatively different from other organisations. Moreover, al-Qaeda has repeatedly stated that the United Kingdom and its citizens are targets of its terrorist network. Since 9/11I emphasise this because it is important that it is understoodthe police and intelligence services in this country have successfully disrupted a number of attacks in the United Kingdom before they could be mounted. The fact that there has been no terrorist attack in this country since 9/11 is due to the quality of our security services and police, not to any lack of terrorist ambition to mount an attack in this country. It would be deeply ironic if our success in preventing terrorist attacks should persuade us that now is the time to lower our guard in any way. I argue exactly the contrary: that our success in that regard makes it even more important not to lower our guard in any way.

Crispin Blunt: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke: I want to make a little more progress, but I will give way in a moment to the hon. Gentleman and other colleagues.
	In the battle against the terrorist threatit is a battle, and a war, against an organisation that seeks to attack uswe must acknowledge that the terrorists' capacity has changed and increased. We must also acknowledge that our capacity has changed and increased in surveillance, in the resources that we allocate to the security services, and in international co-operation, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson) referred. We are seeking much higher levels of international co-operation than previously to address precisely those questions. We must strengthen our capacity in those areas. We are engaged in a battle and it is a battle that we cannot resile from in any way.
	When Sir John Stevens was Metropolitan Police Commissioner he gave us the following advice in November 2003:
	What we have to do is to see attack as inevitable in terms of the way in which we prepare and try and protect ourselves against such an attack.
	I am not prepared to accept that an attack is inevitable and I will do all in my power to prevent the inevitability of any attack. That is why the Bill is before the House.

Crispin Blunt: Does the Secretary of State understand the danger of proceeding on the basis of assertion, and the need to produce evidence to sustain support throughout the House and the country for these extraordinary measures? He said that the Government have been successful in preventing operations, but the terrorists surely know that those operations have been disrupted, so why can he not share that information when making his case? He is making a case for the powers of administrative detention on the basis of assertion, but, following the war in Iraq, the Government have lost trust. I urge the Home Secretary to bring a detailed case to the House.

Charles Clarke: First, I set out yesterday in the HouseI hope that the hon. Gentleman studied what I said in detaila series of papers addressing precisely the point that he raised. Secondly, he simply does not accept the seriousness of our situation[Hon. Members: He did not say that.] He did say that he could not accept it. He said clearly that he could not accept, without further evidence, that we face a threat of the sort that I assert. He should accept that.

Elfyn Llwyd: Given that the Home Secretary is referring to international terrorism, can he tell the House of any democracy in which such Executive orders exist?

Charles Clarke: A wide range of democracies use such measures, depending on the legal system in the countries concerned. In some European Union countries, individuals may be locked up for three, four or five years, but, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, a different legal system exists in those regimes with an instruction judge system.

Julian Lewis: The Home Secretary rightly paid tribute to the security services' successful prevention of attack. It was adequate to use judges in special courts at the height of the IRA offensive when it was involved in wide-scale attacks, so why is it not adequate to use judges in special courts, instead of politicians, at a time when, thank goodness, attacks have not yet been successfully carried out?

Charles Clarke: There are different solutions, and having judges in special courts is one solution that could be considered. However, that does not address the central objection of those who criticise the legislation. The fact is that there is evidence of activity that cannot be put before a court, of whatever type. That is the fundamental issue.

Nick Gibb: Given that some countries use intercept evidence in court, would not an alternative approach be to amend our disclosure rules so that intercept evidence could be used in our courts safely and securely?

Charles Clarke: We considered that in detail in the review commissioned by the Prime Minister and on which I gave a written statement to the House some weeks ago. It is certainly possible to consider different approaches, but the core point that must be understood is that there is no evidence that the use of intercept evidence has been successful in bringing terrorists to trial in any country in the world. That is the reality with which we must deal.

David Heath: The Secretary of State knows that our substantial difference of opinion with him is that he is proposing a system of Executive control orders that he would make, which would then be considered by a judge. In our view, it is essential that those orders are confirmed, in the first instance, by a judge on application from him. When the Prime Minister was questioned on the matter, he suggested that the principal argument for that was urgency. Is there not a case for some form of interim order on sufficient evidence, to deal with precisely that issue?

Charles Clarke: I intend to deal with that matter later in my speech and will address the hon. Gentleman's point then. However, it is an appropriate matter to be discussed in Committee because the issues raised by the Liberal Democrats, as well as those raised by some of my hon. Friends, are legitimate aspects of debate on the Bill.

Tam Dalyell: On a point of factit may be to my discredit that I do not knowin which other democracies are people locked up without charge and without trial?

Charles Clarke: That happens in France, Spain and Italy, for example, under a different legal regime.

Dominic Grieve: The Home Secretary must not mislead the House. He must be acquainted with the different regimes in force in other European countries. If detention takes place in those countries, it is in the context of investigation prior to trial. It is not administrative detention of the sort that he envisages.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman rephrase the initial part of his intervention. No right hon. or hon. Member seeks to mislead the House.

Dominic Grieve: The Home Secretary should not inadvertently mislead the House.

Charles Clarke: I was not seeking to mislead the House in any way, inadvertently or otherwise. I said that there are different regimes of the sort to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The fact is that people end up locked up and deprived of liberty. The different systems are a key issue in looking at the way in which the legislative changes will take place.

Robin Cook: My right hon. Friend gave an important response to the intervention from the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). Does he understand that he would meet the anxieties of many Labour Members who cannot support the Bill as drafted if he would take the next logical step and allow the courts to make the decision in the first instance, rather than second-guessing his decision? The sticking point is that the decision on whether to deprive a citizen of liberty should be judicial and not political.

Charles Clarke: I certainly understand very well my right hon. Friend's concern, which, it has to be said, is shared by other Members in all parts of the House. In their view, there needs to be judicial involvement at the earliest practical opportunity in the control order process, particularly if it results in someone being deprived of their liberty. I can assure the House that I will continue to give careful consideration to this issue, which has been raised with me by a number of colleagues, and we will of course debate it in detail in Committee on Monday. However, I must be certain that nothing is done to undermine my responsibility or ability as Home Secretary to safeguard the security of the country. That said, I recognise the point that has been made.

Michael Weir: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: No, I will now make some more progress. As I have said, I will come to the judicial point later.
	The Bill is before the House as part of a key set of proposals to address the terrorist threat that the country faces. There are four motivating principles behind the Bill, which I want to set out as clearly as I can. The first of them addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn). We need to have a more secure prosecution process; on that, I share the ambition described by my hon. Friend. I emphasise that control orders will be used sparingly and only, as now with the current part 4 powers, in very serious cases. As I explained yesterday, prosecution is, and will continue to be, our preferred approach. These orders are for those dangerous individuals whom we cannot prosecute or deport, but whom we cannot allow to go on their way unchecked because of the seriousness of the risk that they pose to everybody else in the country.
	Simply to illustrate the point, let me confirm the facts again. Between 11 September 2001 and last December, there were 701 arrests under the Terrorism Act 2000; 119 of those arrested were charged, and 45 of those 119 were charged with other offences as well. A further 135 were charged under legislation other than the 2000 Act, and 17 were then convicted of other offences. I set out those figures to emphasise to the House the seriousness with which we take the view that we must go down the prosecution route first and foremost, if we can achieve that.

David Winnick: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: I will do so when I have finished my point on prosecutions.
	Before making, renewing or remaking any control order, I shall ask the police whether there are realistic prospects of bringing criminal charges against the individual concerned, and I shall seek the confirmation of the police that further investigations will be carried out during the period when the order is enforced in order to pursue prosecution as the preferred route.
	I turn to my final point on prosecution.

John Denham: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: I will do so in a second. Finally on prosecution, I mentioned yesterday that we are looking at the framework of our current counter-terrorist legislation and at the scope of the offences with which terrorists are charged to see whether there are any gaps or deficiencies that we can and should remedy. I hope to introduce further legislation as soon as it is practicable to do so; that is my objective. Yesterday, I mentioned a potential new offence of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, but there are others as well, because we must give the police all the tools that they need to combat terrorism and to bring the perpetrators to justice.

David Winnick: As I said yesterday, I will support Second Reading of the Bill later today, but I would be much happier if the Home Secretary would reinforce the point that he made to my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), when he said, in effect, that he will give very careful consideration to the valid points made by my right hon. Friend and other Members. If the Home Secretary does that, I will vote tonight in the way that I suggested in a much happier frame of mind.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend's happiness is very high on my list of priorities. I can confirm what I said to   my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook). However, as I have said on a number of occasions, I will come to the judicial point a little later and I will elaborate on it then.

John Denham: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I welcome what he has said about seeking assurances from the police on whether there is a sufficient case to prosecute and to conduct further investigations. However, might not the appropriate route be for the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider all the information that is available in a particular case, and for him to provide the Home Secretary with advice as to whether that case is prosecutable?

Charles Clarke: My right hon. Friend and his colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee have addressed this issue, and he has also said to me separately that there is a case for looking at whether an intervening procedure would also help in dealing with this process. I can assure him that I am ready to look at the precise way in which this issue can be dealt with.

Douglas Hogg: The right hon. Gentleman told the House about the number of individuals charged under terrorist or related legislation. Will he be good enough to tell us how many have been convicted?

Charles Clarke: I will repeat what I said a few seconds ago: 17. I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was not listening.

David Kidney: My right hon. Friend has been very fair in saying on a number of occasions that prosecution would always be the first preferred route, but nowhere in the Bill is that stated. Would he be amenable to amending the Bill, so that it states that that would be a constant consideration of the Home Secretary? The significance of such an amendment is that at every stage of judicial oversight, judges could take that factor into account.

Charles Clarke: I will take advice on that point and on the legal process that my hon. Friend suggests. I can assure him absolutely and without qualification that prosecution is the preferred route, as I was at pains to set out in this speech and in my statement to the House yesterday. I will look into whether that can be reinforced in law in any way.

Lynne Jones: Will my right hon. Friend also seek advice, through the DPP, the police or any other relevant body, as to whether a prosecution might be possible if impediments to the use of certain types of evidence, such as intercept evidence, were removed? I understand that the Metropolitan police, the former head of MI5 and a number of other organisations believe that the Government are tying the hands of the police and others behind their backs with regard to achieving a prosecution in some circumstances.

Charles Clarke: I want to make the situation clear, and I should point out that I simply do not accept my hon. Friend's description of the position of the Metropolitan police. I think the individual she was referring to was Sir Stephen Lander, the former head of MI5 and chairman designate of the Serious Organised Crime Agency. I commend to her his letter to the newspapers of a few days ago and his excellent interview on the Today programme against the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy)I should have said with, not againston precisely that point. Our position is clear.

Vera Baird: I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend has said that he will consider sending all these files to the DPP, because that is an essential step. Is it not implicit in the application for a control order that the case in question has been impossible to prosecute? It is not appropriate for the Home Office to take such a decision when there is a constitutional figurethe DPPwhose job that is.

Charles Clarke: I understand that point, which I will consider, and I know that my hon. and learned Friend has written specifically about it. There are serious issues on both sides of the argument, but hers is a well-made point that we can discuss.

Patrick McLoughlin: The right hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. He said that 701 people had been arrested and he then gave the figures for those convicted. What category did the people currently in Belmarsh fall into? Was it thought that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute them?

Charles Clarke: I am not prepared to discuss individual cases, but what I will say is that all the individuals whom the hon. Gentleman refers to are being dealt with under powers in part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, and not under the Terrorism Act 2000, to which my statistics refer.
	I said that I wanted to set out the motivating principles behind this legislation, and the first of them is getting a secure route to prosecution. The second is to protect our national securitythat must be a key principle behind the resolutionsagainst the terrorist threat that I have set out. I argue that we need to provide control orders that give the police and the security services the means to apply control to those who are offering precisely the threat against which we have to protect ourselves.

Claire Ward: rose

Charles Clarke: I will complete this point and then give way.

William Cash: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Charles Clarke: As I have said on a number of occasions, I like to make my speech in little chunks and then give way to a group of Members; that is what I will do, if the House will permit me. [Interruption.] In the past, too many people have called me a big chunk rather than a little chunk, I am afraid.
	The second motivating principle is the need to protect national security, and in particular to provide the control orders that enable us to do that. They give us the means to secure our country that the security services and the police have asked for, and the Newton committee report recommended them in paragraph 251. Indeed, they are widely seen as meeting the disproportionality criticism that the Law Lords set out. I believe they are necessary for the security of this country, which is a key motivating principle, and I argue that strongly. I accept that there are people who say they are necessary but question the way in which they are put in place. That is a legitimate area for discussion, but I argue that they are necessary.
	When the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) makes his speech, will he respond to this serious point? What is the position of the main Opposition party on these matters? It is very important that we understand whether it supports control orders. I thought that the Leader of the Opposition was clear about that, but he became unclear when he met the Prime Minister last Friday, when he said that he did not want control orders at all, and he was less clear a moment ago. I gather that Andrew Marr was saying at lunchtime that he was unclear about the Conservative position, so it would be helpful if the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden could make that clear.

David Trimble: I am concerned about a practical matter with regard to control orders. A whole range of activities is set out in clause 1. How will they be enforced as a matter of practice, not in theory? How can they be enforced without massive use of police resources and huge disruption for local communities?

Charles Clarke: The resources issue is serious, as the right hon. Gentleman says, and one of the reasons why there has been a significant increase in resources for the security services in the comprehensive spending review is to try to ensure that we have those means. There is first the legal question and then the question of resources that he raises. We are making resources available to deal with the matter.

David Davis: I am happy to give the Home Secretary an answer now. If he had read the Hansard of the debate that he was unable to attendI think he was at the Home Affairs Committeehe would have seen that I dealt directly with the issue. We do not like the idea of control orders. We think that the method for their proposed use is flawed, but we are open-minded if they can be amended to meet our principal concerns about them. That was the point I made at the time in response to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten).

Charles Clarke: I am genuinely delighted at that clarification. It is a difference from the position of the leader of the right hon. Gentleman's party, but I am very glad that, in this case, it is the right hon. Gentleman's writ that is running. It is important that that should be the case, because I seeklet me be clear about thisall-party agreement to the proposition that control orders are part of the armoury that we need to defend ourselves against the terrorist threat. I am delighted that he has signed up to that.

Claire Ward: My right hon. Friend will recall that I asked him yesterday about the impact of a home detention order on members of the household. May I give him another opportunity to clarify his position on that? Will it be the responsibility of the Home Secretary and of the judge assessing the order to take into consideration the human rights of other members of the household and the impact on them? What legal redress, within the same time scale as the legal redress that my right hon. Friend is setting out, would be available to other members of the household, including minors?

Charles Clarke: The short answer to that question is yes. It would be the Home Secretary's obligation to take into account the factors that my hon. Friend set out. The main legal redress would be through the appeal regime established against the control orders. Others in the household, or others around, could have that recourse to appeal their situation. I well understand my hon. Friend's particular concern, but it will be dealt with under the measure.

William Cash: The Home Secretary has set out his motivating principles

Charles Clarke: I have only just started.

William Cash: No doubt there are others to come. So far, does the Home Secretary accept that the prime motivating principle should be that the legislation should stand up, on his terms, to legal challenge in future? The Attorney-General is said to have doubts about that, but as I said to the Home Secretary yesterday, all he has to do is to bring in legislation stating notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998 and then legislate accordingly. If he does so, there is no doubt that he would be able to ensure that the legislation would be upheld because judges would be under a requirement to do so. What is his answer to that?

Charles Clarke: My answer is: wait until my third motivating principle.

Simon Thomas: With regard to control orders and their ultimate use for administrative detention, the Home Secretary made it clear yesterday that, under the current advice he was receiving, he would not seek to derogate from the charter of human rights and that the current security situation did not demand the imposition of such orders in this country now. So, as a consensus seems to be emerging in the House about the use of control orders below administrative detention, why is it not possible for the Bill's provisions to go up to but not include that, so that we can have a proper debate about control orders without administrative detention? That would give the Home Secretary an opportunity to reconsider and all of us would have more time to consider the exact judicial role in respect of administrative detention. Surely, that would be a much better way to approach the issue.

Charles Clarke: There are two answers to that questionone of principle and one of practice. I think it is right in principle that, if there is to be a derogation, the subject of that derogation, in terms both of the threat and of the strict requirement for deprivation of liberty to meet that threatthe two legs of a derogation caseshould be debated in this House and the other House. There should be specific discussion of that question, and every Member of this and the other House should make their decision on that issue. That is a superior way of legislating on these difficult matters, rather than the general confusion of another piece of legislation going through.
	There is also an important practical question. The fact is that terrorists are moving rapidly and it may be necessary to move rapidly to deal with them. I need only cite the most recent example in Europe. The Madrid atrocity took place during the Spanish general election campaign and such things are always possibilities in this country, too. In those circumstances, we must be able to take the steps necessary to stop such things happening.

Sarah Teather: Does the Home Secretary accept that detention without trial was one of the most controversial and hated aspects of the troubles in Northern Ireland and consequently one of the most effective recruitment routes for terrorist organisations? What are the implications of the Bill for terrorist recruitment in this country?

Charles Clarke: I do not accept the language that the hon. Lady used, but I accept that there are serious issues about the use of internment in the case that she mentioned. That is why such powers should not be used except in exceptional circumstances and after full consideration, which is precisely what I propose.

David Davis: I do not want to make the Home Secretary's life more difficult than it is, but on the issue of internment without trial, all the control orders proposed beneath derogation level will still be known to the communities where they are being used. Does he realise that, if the process is not known and understood and believed to be just, those orders, too, will be seen to be unfair?

Charles Clarke: That is exactly why the Bill proposes detailed reporting procedures to the House and elsewhere, to set out exactly how the control order regime is operating, the quantity and so on. There may be myths and realities about those questions, but there should be informed and proper debate about the issues. It is exactly for that reason that the orders should be seen not as shadowy things but as something clear that people can discuss and consider in their particularity.

Sally Keeble: Can my right hon. Friend give some explanation of the enormous range of provisions for types of control order set out in subsections (3)(a) to (o) of clause 1? Many of those activities look similar to things that I saw happening to friends in South Africa, which will make it extremely hard to vote for the measure. Will he also explain which of them require derogation and how that provision will work?

Charles Clarke: I will deal with the second point first. The derogation arises either when there is an individual measure or a combination of measures that add up to a deprivation of liberty. It will arise when an individual measure or a set of measures is being considered in those circumstances. Although I respect my hon. Friend's personal experience, I do not accept her comparison, because when we reach the point of deprivation of liberty a whole set of other issues comes into play, so we need a separate legal regime.

Michael Weir: rose

Charles Clarke: I shall not give way, as I want to make progress.
	The third motivating principle, which exactly meets the point made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, is the need to meet the Law Lords' judgment. In general, I do not regard it as a successful and positive state of affairs when the senior judiciary of this country, the Law Lords, and the Executive are in rather different places, and certainly not in terms of measures of this type. Their criticism of the regime in place was that it was disproportionate in character and discriminatory, and we should take that criticism extremely seriously. The measures that I am putting to the House in the Bill would address that question directly.

William Cash: rose

Patrick Cormack: rose

Charles Clarke: I shall give way again when I come to the end of what I am saying. The hon. Gentlemen can listen to what I am saying and then come to a view. The fact is that, from June 2002 until December 2004, when the Law Lords' judgment was passed, a judicial process was taking place, with its final step in the Law Lords' judgment, considering the legality or otherwise of the steps that had been taken. In my opinion, it was correct in relation to that process for us to await the judgment and decide exactly what we would do on the basis of receiving it. We now have that judgment. I argue very strongly that we should not ignore the judgment or flout it, but act on it and try to put in place a regime that is both proportionate and not discriminatory.

William Cash: The Home Secretary is not really answering my point. It is not a question of whether or not he is complying with the Law Lords' judgment. The problem arises because the Government have got themselves into a complete mess with regard to the human rights legislation. Surely the point is simply that, to ensure that the House can legislate on its own terms, it must legislate notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998, and then he is in the clear. Does he not see that?

Charles Clarke: I do not accept any of that. I simply do not accept the argument. I do not think that it is correct. What I do think is that when the Law Lords of this country make a set of criticisms about the way that we are operating that is well founded, by a vote of eight to one, it is incumbent on the Governmentand, I would argue, on Parliamentto respond to that and decide how to deal with it.

Patrick Cormack: I am not entirely unsympathetic to many of the points that the Home Secretary is making, but can he tell the House whether there have indeed been discussions with the Lord Chief Justice and the Law Lords on the Bill?

Charles Clarke: Yes, I can say that. I can say that explicitly in my case in relation to the Lord Chief Justice, with whom I have informal discussions from time to time. The Law Lords are a very much more distinguished group of people and I am not sure that humble politicians can talk to them in quite that way. The answer is that we are actively discussing these questions with the judiciary. I cannot speak for them, of course, but I have certainly soughtas has the Lord Chancellor in the other placeto take account of what the senior lawyers have been saying about these questions.

Bill Wiggin: Had the legislation already been in place, how many of the 701 people that the Home Secretary mentioned earlier have been arrestedof whom only 17 were convictedwould have been subject to a control order?

Charles Clarke: Those people would not have been subject to control orders because they are going through the courts in the prosecution regime that we are describing, but I cannot, and will not, comment on the situation that arises for any control order in a particular situation over that whole period of time.

Michael Weir: Several times this afternoon, the Home Secretary has mentioned the appeal procedure for control orders. Clause 7 mentions the appeal procedure by way of judicial review. In Scotland, at least, judicial review is a process whereby people challenge the process by which a decision was made, rather than the decision itself. In considering these cases, will the courts be able to consider the evidence itself or will they be able to consider only the process by which the Home Secretary decides that the order is appropriate?

Charles Clarke: The courts will be able to consider the material situation. As I said, I will come to the judicial review process in a moment.
	The House will be glad to hear that I am now on my final and fourth motivating principle for the Bill: the need to end the uncertainty about the legal position that exists at the moment. Why is renewal of the existing powers, as proposed by the Opposition, in my view so poor an option, other than to give the Conservative party the chance to buy time and get itself sorted out? There are two main considerations, which I set out yesterday in the House.
	First, if we were simply to renew the current part 4 legislation, as is proposed, it would be entirely possible for the individuals concerned, at Belmarsh or wherever, to appeal against the Act to the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg directly in that time scale. The very act of making that appeal would put uncertainty into the situation, which I believe would be undesirable. Moreover, in that situation, in the case of the individuals currently in Belmarsh, it would be entirely possible for SIAC, when considering their cases, to say that the position that we had taken did not allow detention in those circumstances, despite the fact that the order had been renewed.
	If we were to accept the advice of the Opposition to renew the part 4 powers, in effect, we would be establishing a regime that was uncertain and not solid for a period of three, four, five or six months. That is why I urge the Conservative party to come to the view that renewal is not the route that it thinks it is to buy time, as set out by the Leader of the Opposition, but is actually a flawed route.
	Those are the four motivating principles of the Bill: first, to secure prosecutions as our best way of moving forward; secondly, to protect national security by the use of control orders; thirdly, to meet the Law Lords' judgment; and, fourthly, to end damaging uncertainty. I argue that all those in the House who can support those four principles ought, in my opinion, to support the Bill on Second Reading and give it the fair wind that it deserves. Of course, none of that ignores the fact that there are issues of legitimate debate below those four principlesif I can put it like thatabout the structures that the Bill puts in place. A range of issues will be debated in this House and the other place on those matters. However, it is right to say that, in my judgment, the biggest outstanding issue is the extent and form of judicial involvement in the process. That has been raised by a number of colleagues from my party as well as by other parties.
	I intend to set out the judicial process that is within the legislation and then to confirm again the remarks that I made to my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston earlier. Before I do that, I will give way to an array of talent on the Opposition Benches.

Elfyn Llwyd: Given what the Home Secretary has just saidthat there are legitimate disputes about the contents of the Billwhy is the debate limited to two days? That is a question that perplexes all hon. Members, on both sides of the Chamber. The Bill deserves far more consideration that it is being given.

Charles Clarke: Of course, I hear that argument. It is one that is made by a number of colleagues and it is frequently made when matters of this kind are considered. It has legitimacy, or not. It is an issue. I believe that the time available, both in this House and the other House, is ample to consider these questions. He obviously disagrees and other Members disagree, but that is an issue to be resolved.

Malcolm Bruce: Has the Home Secretary not just described himself as being between a rock and a hard place? If he is not prepared to extend the existing regimehe is quite right to refuse to do soand he cannot get the legislation through both Houses in the present circumstances, is not the right thing to do to concede that it should be a judicial decision and to stop the charade of trying to pretend that he can maintain his own position?

Charles Clarke: I think that being between a rock and a hard place is part of the job description for this particular job, but I hope that my shoulders are broad enough to push the rock or the hard place aside to try to get to a solution if I can.

Simon Hughes: May I pursue the constructive approach of my hon. Friends and suggest two other reasons why I hope the Home Secretary will be persuaded of the case for making the sequence of events different? The first is to do with the urgency point. He will know well that courts can be summoned and judges can be called on at any hour of the day and throughout the weekend, at any time. Secondly, it would be far better for the upholding of the authority of Government, of any party, for Ministers to have their proposal endorsed by the judiciary, rather than what has happened to many Home Secretaries, which is to have their decision overturned by the courts. It must be better for an idea of his, on advice, to be backed up by the courts at the beginning, rather than undermined a week later.

Charles Clarke: That is part of the argument. Let me set out our proposals clearly, so that colleagues can see where we are.

Sally Keeble: This builds on my previous question. The Home Secretary indicated in his reply that any of paragraphs (a) to (o) could require a derogation. Is that true? Or is it a certain combination of them? Secondly, under the list of offences, will collusion in the breach by a controlled person be an offence as wellfor example, if somebody visits someone outside the hours, employs them, and so on?

Charles Clarke: On the first point, I did not say, because it is not the case, that any of the orders, individually themselves, would be a breach of deprivation of liberty. What I did say was that that may be the case for one or more of them. Moreover, if some of those orders were used in combination they could, combined, add up to a deprival of liberty. How that was dealt with would be a matter for legal judgment at the time. On my hon. Friend's second point, I think that the answer to the question is yes, but I will take advice on that before properly answering the point.

Alan Beith: The answer is yes.

Charles Clarke: I look at the right hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and if he says the answer is yes, I know it must be yes.

Clive Betts: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, given the different powers under clauses 1 and 2, if he concludes that a combination of the various measures under clause 1(3) is required which amounts to a deprivation of liberty, the test will be different in relation to whether the control order should be imposed and will be based not on reasonable suspicion but on balance of probabilities?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct. Just to make it absolutely clear, let me say that, if there had been a derogation and there were then a deprivation of liberty by an individual order or a combination of orders, the higher standard of proof established in the Bill would be required.
	Let me conclude by setting out quickly what the judicial proposals are.

Jim Cunningham: Will the Home Secretary clarify whether the undertaking that he gave my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) will materialise in Committee? In other words, when will we know the conclusion that the Home Secretary has reached?

Charles Clarke: I will stick by the commitment that I gave, so I hope that what I said will be clear when the Bill is considered in Committee.

Graham Allen: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise to the Home Secretary for interrupting his speech, but I seek clarification on procedure. I understand that the Committee stage of the Bill will take place on Monday. Am I right to assume that any amendments that hon. Members might wish to table as a result of the Home Secretary's open-mindedness would have to be tabled before the close of play tomorrow? We might have difficult technical questions about drafting with which we may need assistance before then.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman will know that the Clerks of the House are well capable of giving assistance to hon. and right hon. Members. Obviously selection has not yet taken place, and the selection process will be as sympathetic as possible to hon. Members, given the circumstances and the context of the Bill.

Charles Clarke: I am grateful for your clarification, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) implied, different procedures are proposed for the judicial scrutiny of derogating and non-derogating control orders. Under the Bill's provisions on non-derogating control ordersthose considered beneath the requirements that apply to the deprivation of libertyan individual may appeal against the making of an order to the High Court. When considering the appeal, the Court must adopt the approach that it would use for an application for judicial review. I anticipate that, in cases that involve a consideration of human rights, the Court will apply greater scrutiny to the Secretary of State's decision and examine closely whether any interference with convention rights is proportionate. There will be a specific obligation to examine such matters carefully.
	On derogating control orders, which are dealt with in clause 2 and other provisions of the Bill, there will be an automatic two-stage process for challenging the order. First, clause 2 provides that a derogating control order must be referred immediately to the High Court, which must consider within seven days whether there were reasonable prima facie grounds for making the order. If there are such grounds, the second stage will be that the judge will automatically refer the case for a full hearing by the Court, at which it will make its own decision, following a consideration of all material, about whether, on the balance of probabilities, the individual is or was involved in terrorism-related activity, and about whether the control order and each of the obligations were necessary.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I shall give way when I reach the end of this point, as I have done throughout my speech.
	The subject of the order will also have the right of appeal against any modification of a derogating control order, or a decision not to revoke or modify such an order. Just as with an appeal against the making of an order, there will be a full hearing at which the Court will reach its decisions on the relevant matters.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke: If we were to derogate from article 5 of the European convention on human rights, we would keep the need for any such derogation under review. The Bill thus provides for the Secretary of State

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke: I heard my hon. and learned Friend, and I shall give way in due course, as I have said to everyone else. He has a very loud voiceit is often louder than the wisdom of his remarksand I shall certainly give way to him in a moment.
	The Bill thus requires the Secretary of State to lay an order, subject to affirmative resolution, before Parliament each year after the first year to state that it continues to be necessary for the Secretary of State to have the power to impose derogating obligations by reference to the derogation, and derogating control orders shall have effect only beyond the first year of the derogation while such an order is in force. That represents the basis of the judicial engagement currently set out in the Bill.

Several hon. Members: rose

Charles Clarke: I first give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith).

Alan Beith: During yesterday's statement, the Home Secretary said that, when such proceedings come before the High Court or the Court of Session, special advocate procedures might be used. Will he bear it in mind that the Constitutional Affairs Committee yesterday received chilling evidence from nine existing special advocates about the difficulties that they face during such proceedings? Will he clarifyit is unclear in the Billwhether it will be for the High Court and the Court of Session to decide the kind of special advocate proceedings that they will use, if any, or is there another means by which he intends to impose those proceedings on the courts?

Charles Clarke: I take the right hon. Gentleman's point. Both the Attorney-General and Lord Carlile, in his review of the special procedures, have made similar points. I have not yet had a chance to study the evidence given yesterday in detailI have only read reports of it. However, I confirm that we accept the need to review the procedures to try to deal with several points that have been made, and we will carry that through.

Alistair Carmichael: I agree with the Home Secretary that judicial protection is important, but does he accept that that is somewhat undermined by paragraph 8 of the schedule to the Bill, which provides that, if an order is quashed, the Home Secretary may make the same order again while relying on the same evidence?

Charles Clarke: Not at all. The role of the Court is still clearly established.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Following on from the point about South Africa that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) has made several times, the High Court's jurisdiction on judicial review extends only to law and procedures, as my right hon. Friend is well aware. Will he state unequivocally that the only review of all the matters to which clause 1 refersrestriction on movement, restriction on work, restriction on association and so on; they are similar to the pass laws in many wayswill be on matters of law and procedure, and that the court will be enjoined that it cannot interfere on matters of fact? Is that right, because it certainly seems to be what appears in the Bill?

Charles Clarke: I do not think that it is right. We are setting out two different processes, depending on whether derogation applies or notwhether or not there is deprivation of liberty. My hon. and learned Friend is right about non-derogating issues, but not derogating issues.

Richard Burden: May I raise a similar point, although I am now a little confused? I think that the Secretary of State said that different procedures would apply for non-derogating and derogating orders. However, he earlier said that one or more of the non-derogated matters could become derogated if they were in a particular combination. What would be the procedure for that, and who would decide it?

Charles Clarke: The legal power to establish a range of orders under the Bill means that an order for the deprivation of liberty will be made by the Home Secretary and confirmed by a judge. If it were argued that a combination of measures added up to a deprivation of liberty, the judge would make a judgment on that, the Court of Appeal would carry the procedure though and the situation would be dealt with. The case would trip over on to the different process.

Win Griffiths: I am pleased that the Home Secretary said that his mind is still open about whether primacy should lie with him or the judiciary. What is the likelihood of his Department tabling an amendment before MondayI know that the situation is complex because I have been trying to find a way to amend the Billthat would make it absolutely clear that the judiciary would make a decision based on evidence provided by the Secretary of State about what he is minded to do in such extreme circumstances?

Charles Clarke: I say again what I said earlier to my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston. I assure hon. Members that I shall continue to give careful consideration to the issue. That means that I shall examine the appropriate language to deal with the situation.

Clive Betts: May I return to the judicial process for non-derogated orders? Is it not correct that, when judges consider a case, they will not look at it afresh and reach their own decisions based on the evidence, but decide whether the Home Secretary has behaved reasonably by coming to the view that he has reasonable grounds for suspicion? Surely that is an extremely low-level test for taking fairly fundamental rights away from British citizens?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is right in what he says, but it is not a low-level test: it is a serious test of a serious, difficult matter. It is an important point for him to make, and I understand why he makes it, but I do not think that it is a low-level test.

John Bercow: Whether judicial decision is made in the first instance, as we believe it should be, or in the last instance, as the Home Secretary prefers, is surely a fairly fundamental matter of principle. Can I therefore take it, from his response to the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham), that the Government's readiness or otherwise to back down next week will depend very much on the size of the revolt this week?

Charles Clarke: I have become accustomed over the years to admiring the hon. Gentleman's contributions to debate. However, on this occasion, I cannot respect what he says, as it is simply not correct. We will consider the matter on its merits.

Crispin Blunt: To follow up the point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), surely the test on the Home Secretary, if we are to accept the Bill, should not be that he should be satisfied on the balance of probabilities but beyond reasonable doubt. He is making a test based on no evidence from the defence at all, solely on the case being put to him by the authorities. Why is that test, in those circumstances, not beyond reasonable doubt before he seeks to deprive British citizens of their liberty under a derogating order?

Charles Clarke: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman confirms what he said earlier. Effectively, he is of the view that a control order regime should not be in place. He is entitled to argue that, but I do not accept that position.
	I have given way a great deal in this debate and have spoken for just over an hour. I know that a lot of people want to come into the debate.

Dominic Grieve: Can I take the Home Secretary back a moment, as this issue goes to the root of some of the problems that the House faces? He expressed concern about the special advocate procedure and said that he shared such concerns, and yet if he reads paragraph 75 of Lord Carlile's report, he will see that he highlights the concerns, saying that he is slightly surprised to have to repeat unfulfilled suggestions from his report a year ago. Does not the Home Secretary understand that one might have greater faith in the Government in these matters had they already responded positively to previous suggestions?

Charles Clarke: That is a debating point, which the hon. Gentleman is entitled to make. I want to put on record that I appreciate the work of Lord Carlile. The hon. Gentleman should examine carefully his report, as his approach in reviewing the legislation confirms precisely the need for the kind of regulation that we have now, because of the threat established.
	I said at the beginning, and now conclude by saying, that on the four key principles that I have established and set out, this Bill deserves the support of the House. I hope that it will be agreed today, and I hope that, through agreeing it, we will be able to provide even stronger and more effective protections against the dire threat posed by international terrorism to this country.

David Davis: I beg to move, To leave out from That to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, because it contains excessive powers in relation to requirements on a person to remain at a particular place when such powers are not presently necessary; gives to the Executive powers that should be exercised by the judiciary; allows decisions to be made on an insufficient standard of proof; fails to address the need to bring terrorists to trial on the basis of all evidence available; and thus wrongly infringes the right to liberty of the individual.
	I shall start by attempting to put this debate on a proper basis. First, the Home Secretary started with rather a good description of the state of terrorism today. I did not agree with all his five categories for differentiating al-Qaeda, but there is no doubt that it constitutes a qualitatively different set of terrorist threats than existed before. That does not mean that we should throw away all that we have learned in this country in dealing with terrorist threats in the past. It does mean, of course, that we should alter our tactics accordingly. However, we should not throw away the civilised standards of which this country has become proud over the centuries.
	I want to make two other points to the Home Secretary. Yesterday, he accused his opponents on this issue of, I think, playing politics with terrorism. That accusation is neither helpful to this debate nor in any sense serious. The easy political line in this sort of debate is to tub-thump about the threats, to raise the temperature and to talk about draconian penalties for terrorists. The harder line is to raise questions of principle, liberty and the proper process of British justice. The easy but, in my view, irresponsible approach would have been to roll over and let the Government legislate in ways that reduce liberty and harm long-standing, important traditions of British justice, which might even worsen rather than improve the terrorist situation.
	Secondly, the Home Secretary alleged yesterday that the alternative to what he recommends is that we do nothing. That is clearly and patently untrue. It does not reflect well on the strength of his arguments that he needs to put up such an Aunt Sally. Not only have we made alternative proposals, but I and my predecessor made a number of those proposals to his predecessor, giving the Government a great deal of time to consider them.
	Let us take, for example, the proposal that has been raised several times in interventions today, and which the Home Secretary has rejectedthat intercept evidence should be used in court to enable more terrorists to be brought to justice and locked up in a prison, not in their living rooms. I said to the then Home Secretary in February 2004:
	Everyone agrees that the most desirable way to deal with terrorists is to bring them before the courts. That is where the Home Secretary should be concentrating his effortslooking at aspects of the law that make prosecution more difficult and seeing whether they can be corrected.[Official Report, 25 February 2004; Vol. 418, c. 314.]
	The Newton committee highlighted one aspect in particular on which we believe that the Government should act. Paragraph 208 states:
	In our view one way of making it possible to prosecute in more cases will be to remove the UK's self-imposed blanket ban on the use of intercepted communications in court.
	We agreed. That conclusion was reached by Lord Lloyd in his 1996 review. It had the backing then of Lord Carlile and has been advocated in relation to terrorist cases for many years by the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble). It has had the support of successive Chief Constables in Northern Ireland and of Sir John Stevens, as well as support in the United States and in other areas.
	In the United States, extensive details of intercept capacity are published and are a matter of public record. They will therefore already be accounted for in al-Qaeda's behaviour, training and tactics. It is therefore difficult to see how knowledge of our much smaller intercept capacity in this country could make much difference to the training and tactics of al-Qaeda, especially when that is measured against the value of such information in court. That exchange was one year ago.

David Kidney: I am really nervous about disclosing evidence that ends up putting at risk the lives of people who have helped us to collect the information. In relation to the right hon. Gentleman's reference to Lord Carlile, all that Lord Carlile mentions on page 215 of his review is
	the possible use as evidence in criminal trials of intercepted communications on public telephone systems.
	I therefore wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman just supports Lord Carlile on public telephone systems or on the broader intercept debate.

David Davis: It is on the broader intercept debate. The line that is best thought through is that of the Newton committee, which considered the matter. It was not a committee nominated by Liberty. It included past Cabinet Ministers and all its members were, I think, Privy Councillors, one of whom had been a Minister with responsibility for security in Northern Ireland. They did not take the issue lightly and they came up with a procedure, which I shall discuss in a minute, that was designed to protect not just intercept evidence but other sensitive intelligence sources.
	As an aside, the head of the FBI in the United States says explicitly that he would not have been able to bring many racketeers in the US to justicea similar sort of problemhad he not had the opportunity to use intercept evidence.

Lembit �pik: Although my intervention does not relate to that specific point, to avoid interrupting the right hon. Gentleman later, may I ask him the same question that I asked the Home Secretary about motive? In the north of Ireland, a great deal of progress has been made by considering the motives behind terrorism. Does he feel that the Government have paid sufficient attention to considering the motives of international terrorists? That is not to condone what they do, but perhaps we would get further with that than with having as our sole methodology the attempt to suppress the opportunity to terrorise, as the Government seem to be doing.

David Davis: To be fair to the Home Secretary, his first duty in this respect is to prevent the outcome of terrorist attempts. He cannot be held responsible for reading or misreading terrorists' motives.
	To a large extent, many western Governments misread the motives of al-Qaeda. That is something that is not well understood. Of the five conditions of change or difference that the Home Secretary has laid down, I did not agree with his first one, which was about the nihilistic approach. There have been nihilists in the past, but the approach of al-Qaeda is rather more pointed than that. The Home Secretary properly says that his first job is to stop terrorists.

Graham Allen: So that I am clear on Conservative policy, am I right in remembering from the earlier debate to which the right hon. Gentleman contributed that were he the Home Secretary, he would release all the people, in this context, now detained in Belmarsh?

David Davis: No, the hon. Gentleman is not right. I talked to the previous Home Secretary about this very issue. I said that whatever our differences and disagreements in public about the principles, I would not be calling for the release of any individuals, precisely because of the knowledge that he has. I do not think that Hansard would show what the hon. Gentleman describes as being my view.

Douglas Hogg: With regard to the Belmarsh detainees, it is clear that house arrest will not be employed against them in the near future. Does my right hon. Friend accept that if those people were to be released, it is fanciful to suppose that they would constitute a threat to the state, because they will be the subject of the most intense surveillanceand they will know that they are the subject of the most intense surveillance? It is implausible to argue that, in those circumstances, they will try to be involved in terrorism or to make contact with terrorists.

David Davis: My right hon. and learned Friend has shared some of his career with me in the Foreign Office. We are both fully aware of the power of intense surveillance, both in terms of controlling the operation of would-be terrorists and in providing information that is useful for prosecuting those would-be terrorists in future. I think that in substance my right hon. and learned Friend is right, although I would not have phrased the matter in quite the way that he did.
	I return to the point that the Home Secretary made yesterday, which is that there is no alternative.

Patrick Cormack: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

David Davis: I will give way in a moment. I want to get to the end of this section of my speech.

Patrick Cormack: It is on the point that my right hon. Friend is making.

David Davis: Very well.

Patrick Cormack: I am provoked by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg). If these people had not been in Belmarsh in the first place, they would not be subject to any sort of surveillance. Does that not illustrate the necessity of having a mechanism, whether the one being proposed or another one, for putting people who are suspected of terrorist activities under proper supervision?

David Davis: I agree with the conclusion but not with my hon. Friend's premise. It does not follow that if these people were not in Belmarsh they would not be under surveillance. It is entirely likely that they would have been under surveillance if they had not been in Belmarsh. The thrust of the debate is about what the proper surveillance and control is. I hope that we can come to that in a moment.
	I shall finish with the issue of the Home Secretary's allegation that there is no alternative. It picks up the point that was made earlier. We recommended taking up the Newton committee proposal that we put in place a procedure using an investigating judge to sift, assess and present a balanced set of all sensitive evidence, including intercept and other intelligence-based evidence, in a way that protects our security services but that is also fair to the defendant. This is relevant to what Lord Carlile says. I cannot remember the page number, but Lord Carlile raises the problem of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission procedures and the fact that nothing has happened to respond to his own recommendations with regard to those procedures. That is one thing that would help, and we supported that idea.
	We also supported also the idea of an extra charge. I think that the Home Secretary, from what he said earlier, is taking up the idea of acts preparatory to terrorism. We would also look at laws based on the American anti-racketeering laws, which are designed specifically to deal with the same problems of difficulties in obtaining evidence. We would look at any procedure that protected the traditional rights to justice and liberty of the British subject, but which would advance our ability to catch, to prosecute and to convict terrorists. As I think the Home Secretary agreed, that must be the main thrust.
	That raises the issue of the way in which the Government are attacking the problem. In the area of security, the Government have a unique advantage. They have access to data about the activities of terrorists, and knowledge of what they could and could not do in bringing charges given specific problems of evidence. They should have spent the past three years analysing and identifying cases where a change in the law would allow prosecutions to be brought on the basis of available evidence. They should then have discussed those matters with the Opposition parties, and they would have undoubtedly received support for that approach. I am sure that I am right. I certainly speak for the Conservative party, and I suspect that I speak for the Liberal Democrats, too. I see the Liberal Democrat spokesman nodding.

Mark Oaten: The right hon. Gentleman does not speak for my party.

David Davis: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I do not speak for the Liberal Democrats. I am glad to have that clarification. I would hate that confusion to be promulgated.
	We should recognise that the problem that we face arises as a result of poorly drafted legislation, drawn up in haste in the aftermath of 9/11. That mistake was, of course, understandable, but we should not repeat it now. We should take time to get things right. That is why I offered support to the Government in extending part 4 powers for a limited time. The Home Secretary has said that that will not work. That begs the question why he laid a draft statutory instrument a few weeks ago to achieve exactly that outcome. The explanatory note to that SI read:
	The House of Lords expressly stated that the Act remains a valid, enforceable and effective enactment
	If the Home Secretary has concernsto be fair to him, he expressed them to me in private some while ago, before we had this debatehe will remember that I said that we would be willing to put in place a short piece of primary legislation to ensure that the process worked. Far from doing nothing, the Opposition have done everything in their power not just to offer alternatives, but to create time for the Government to consider the alternatives and any other reasonable ways of finding an answer to this difficult problem.
	As I have said, I agree with the Home Secretary that this is about a qualitatively different sort of terrorism that has been true, and known to have been true, for three and a half years, not three and a half weeks. What we are considering today should have been dealt with in the much longer term, as was promised by the Government, within six months of the publication of the Newton report, but they did not deliver.

Mark Oaten: If it is the right hon. Gentleman's view that the part 4 law could be extended, what would his judgment be in those circumstances about what to do with the detainees in Belmarsh? Given that the Home Secretary has said that he does not believe that there needs to be house arrest, I am assuming that we would need part 4 to detain the people in Belmarsh. What would the right hon. Gentleman do with them?

David Davis: It is not for me to make judgments on the safety or otherwise of the individuals concerned. It is for us in this place to lay down the rules. One possible piece of primary legislation we could add would be to ensure that bail conditions amounted to the control orders that are laid out in the Bill, if need be, for the duration of three or six months, not in perpetuity and not applying to all British citizens. That is a possibility. That is as close as I will go in commenting on individual cases.
	Yesterday, I asked the Home Secretary a number of questions on the substance of the Bill. I have to say that I received no answers to them. Under the proposals that are before us, for the first time in modern British history a politician will be able, by order, to constrain the liberties of a British subject. He would do that either on the balance of probabilities or merely on simple suspicion. He would do it for reasons and on evidence that may not even be known to the British subject who loses his liberty. Virtually every control order costs the subject some liberty. We should not differentiate on that basis. There is not a step change, as it were.
	I repeat a quote which I used yesterday from one of the Law Lords, Lord Rodger. He said:
	The Government's assessment is . . . that it is not necessary to detain the British suspects in order to contain the threat that they pose.
	That is implicit in the entire policy that the Government adopted, and it emerges in any event from paragraph 36 of the Home Office discussion paper Counter Terrorism Powers: Reconciling Security and Liberty in an Open Society, which was issued in February 2004. The document states that
	while it would be possible to seek other powers to detain British citizens who may be involved in international terrorism it would be a very grave step. The Government believes that such draconian powers would be difficult to justify.

Charles Clarke: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the following remarks?
	Those who advocate transferring to the judiciary the power to authorise detention before charge need to ask themselves whether decisions based on intelligence material can really be considered appropriate for judicial consideration . . . We would be asking the judges to perform what is, in essence, an Executive function.[Official Report, 9 March 1994; Vol. 256, c. 298.]
	Those were the words of the Leader of the Opposition when he was Home Secretary in 1994.

David Davis: The quotation is from an exchange in which the current Prime Minister said that it was vital that when the liberty of subjects is curtailed, it should be done by the judiciary and not the Executive. The Home Secretary should check the entire exchange and fire his research assistant.
	The Home Secretary told the Home Affairs Committee that the terrorist threat had not materially changed in the past year, so presumably the earlier comment about draconian powers being difficult to justify is still true. He reinforced the point with his comment that the security services do not believe that they need the full extent of the powers in this Bill at this point in time.
	This question, which runs right through the debate, must be asked: what is the immediate emergency that demands that draconian powers against British subjects should be rushed through the Houses of Parliament without proper consideration, scrutiny or debate? What is the emergency that has arisen in the past 12 months that demands that we give the Home Secretary the right to fetter the liberty of British subjectsfrom restricting their ability to communicate right up to and including house arrestwithout proper debate?
	The most substantive concern about the procedure, and it is not the only concern, that the Home Secretary mentioned half a dozen times in his opening remarks is that it is proposed that a British citizen will face the loss of liberty on the decision of the Home Secretary, on suspicion alone and on evidence that the accused never sees. Why should that decision be made by a politician and not by a judge? Earlier today, the Prime Minister suggested that that will allow for speed, but in the most risky case a terrorist can be locked up for 14 days. The previous Conservative Government initiated that law and this Government have extended it. That period is far longer than is necessary for a judge to make a decision, even under the review procedure proposed by the Home Secretary.
	There are good reasons why the Home Secretary should not take such decisions. Imagine the pressures on any politician, and on the Home Secretary in particular, after a terrorist outrage. Imagine the temptation to be better safe than sorry and to put away everybody, which are precisely the circumstances in which a miscarriage of justice will occur.
	Yesterday, the Home Secretary unequivocally stated in his response to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) that he should take those decisions rather than a judge, because of the principle of Ministers' accountability. Within minutes, another Member asked him to comment on a particular case. The Home Secretary replied that he is unable to comment on individual cases, at which point the principle of Ministers' accountability unravels. The nature of the decision is that it is taken on secret grounds, which he cannot share with the House, and that he is unable to comment on the individual case itself. His principle is one of false accountability. Real accountability requires the House to be able to question and the Minister to be able to answer, and that level of accountability cannot exist on this issue.

Alan Beith: The matter concerns more than secrecy. It has never been a desired principle of our legal system that Ministers should come before the House to explain why they have decided that A should be locked up and that B should not. Even if secrecy were not an issue, in this country we have never sought to make such decisions in that waywe have left it to the judiciary, without attaching any kind of political process to it.

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right. I was simply demonstrating the ludicrous nature of the thesis of ministerial accountability in individual cases.

Desmond Swayne: The Prime Minister gave a rather different answer to the leader of the Liberal party, who asked precisely the same question earlier this afternoon. He said that the argument was the need for urgency, but we all know that the police already have the power to lock up people for 14 days.

David Davis: My hon. Friend is correct. The leader of the Liberal party also asked why judges should not act quicklythey act quickly on warrants in any event. The urgency issue is a complete red herring.

David Winnick: rose

David Davis: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman who, although we disagree about this matter, has an outstanding record.

David Winnick: Under the previous Administration, in which the right hon. Gentleman served, one of my constituents, a Sikh, was detained and imprisoned indefinitely without any court action. He was only released because the European Court of Human Rights ruled on the case of another Sikh, who lived in Bedford, as a result of which my constituent was allowed out of prison. There was no court process whatsoever.

David Davis: I will take another intervention if I am wrong, but I believe that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the Chahal case, which occurred before a deportation. The Home Secretary got that point wrong when he discussed how the French hold people. In France, people are held prior to trial, which is different from holding someone indefinitely.

David Winnick: My constituent had lived here lawfully for many years and was the editor of a Sikh journal. He was accused of being involved with terrorism not in the UK, but abroad. However, no court process occurred and, so far as I understand it, there was no question of his being deported. He was just held in prison until the Home Secretary decided on the case. I took a deputation to see the then Home Secretary, who is now the Leader of the Opposition, on that matter. My point is that people have been locked up previously without court action, as we know from the 18B regulation, which was introduced at the start of the 1939 war.

David Davis: If the hon. Gentleman were rightI do not think that he is because we are discussing an issue that arises prior to deportationtwo wrongs do not make a right.

Graham Allen: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way again. Returning to his point about urgency, he mentioned the 14-day period for which people currently may be detained on suspicion of terrorist offences. Does he feel that that period is sufficient to accommodate the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham)? Papers could be got together during that period to assess the possibility of a prosecution and the Director of Public Prosecutions could say yes or no, at which point the Home Secretary could, if it were necessary, seek a detention order from a High Court judge or an Appeal Court judge.

David Davis: I do not have an instant answer to that question, which I would have to examine in some detail before answering. Throughout the short duration of proceedings on the Bill, we intend to examine all such issues to see whether we can amend the Bill to make it acceptable. We are, after all, trying to achieve the right balance between liberty and the protection and security of the public. My argument today is effectively that the balance in the Bill is wrong.

Tam Dalyell: In one way or another, the right hon. Gentleman has great experience of the security services. Does he share the unease felt by some Members about the information on which Ministers must base their decisions? In 1968, Harold Wilson wanted to appoint the then MP for Lanark, Judith Hart, to his Cabinet. The security services objected on the ground that Mrs. Hart had a communist background, but they had identified the wrong Mrs. Hart, who had nothing to do with the MP for Lanark and who was the wife of a distinguished professor at the university of Oxford. The Home Secretary knows that the security services did not distinguish themselves during the miners' strikeand we will leave weapons of mass destruction out of it.

David Davis: As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes his point elegantly.
	That brings me to the question of the evidence on which the Home Secretary makes his decision. The Home Secretary proposes that control orders below the derogation thresholdtagging, communication restrictions and the likeshould be made on the basis of reasonable suspicion, which is an even lower standard of proof than the assumption of the security services in the case of Judith Hart. Incidentally, the standard of proof is so low that it implies a large number of control orders, and I would like to hear what the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety thinks will happen when she makes her winding-up speech.
	Secondly, though technically capable of challenge, the evidence will not all be seen by the accusedJudith Hart would not have known what she was accused of under these circumstances. Reports coming out of SIAC indicate that, sometimes, the evidence put at the secret hearing is materially different from that put at the open hearing, so much so that the nature of the actual charge is different in the closed hearing from that at the open hearing. That means that, completely contrary to all British principles of justice, the accused will not be able to answer the charge, even if he is absolutely innocent and has a cast-iron alibi.
	That brings me again to the nature of the evidence. The former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), has expressed doubts about resting such serious action on unchallenged intelligence data because of the inherently unreliable nature of the information. He has a significant point, which was made even more firmly by the Father of the House.
	As the Father of the House says, in previous years I have had various dealings with the agencies. It has become apparent to me that no matter how professional the agencies areand clearly there have been unprofessional actions on their partthey are always entirely dependent on the accuracy of their sources. These sources are not James Bond with a Minox camera. Generally, they are associates of the target and are motivated by many thingsmoney, greed, envy, malice, hatred and, sometimes, a wish to remove a rival. We are not talking about the most impartial of sources, leaving aside the gross error that the Father of the House mentioned. It is on the basis of suspicion, based on evidence such as that, that the Home Secretary wants to take for himself the powers to constrain the liberty of British subjects.

Douglas Hogg: May I reinforce my right hon. Friend's point by asking whether he read the letter in The Daily Telegraph yesterday from a man whose father was interned on the corrupt evidence of an informera particular case of someone being falsely accused? May I also remind my right hon. Friend that the Leader of the House was prosecuted at the Old Bailey, having been framed by the South African security services?

David Davis: My right hon. and learned Friend has a brilliant record in this area and remakes a good point that he made yesterday, which reinforces my point. We are talking about taking away people's liberty on the basis of suspicion, based on that sort of evidence, and without the scope for challenge.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect on the remarkable power in paragraph 4(3)(c) of the scheduleone of the comprehensible parts of the schedulewhich says, in terms, that the Secretary of State shall not be required to disclose to the court any information or material that he has but does not intend to use? In other words, by statutory precept the Secretary of State is able to conceal disclosure that might be exculpatory.

David Davis: That is an excellent point, which reinforces my concern. I am presuming in all of this a Home Secretary of impeccable motivation who is given information that he will be encouraged not to allow to be challenged. That is simply not acceptable, because the price of mistakes in this area is very high. A miscarriage of justice is always a matter of real concern and, even with these control orders, such miscarriages of justice can wreck lives, even at this apparently low level.
	Imagine the impact on a software designer of being denied access to the internet, or on a salesman of being denied access to telephonesit would be the end of his career. In causing harm to the individual, that will give ammunition to the enemies of the state that we are trying to stop with the Bill. The chairman of the Bar Council said:
	  Disproportionate measures risk radicalising the community from which a detainee comes. That may make this country less rather than more safe.

John Denham: I should like to be quite clear as to where the right hon. Gentleman's argument is leading. He is making a case for saying that we should act only on the basis of evidence that can be heard in a criminal court and subject to those standards of evidence. It is a reasonable case if he wishes to make it. However, all of the arguments that he is currently making about evidence would mean that no type of control order and no measure short of a full criminal prosecution could be envisaged. Is that what he is saying to the House?

David Davis: The right hon. Gentlemanwho, again, has a distinguished record in this areais reflecting a suggestion that I made earlier, namely, a distaste for control orders. I am laying out a series of hurdles that we have to get over. One is the question of the judge. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) made a good point, saying that the fact that the judge only reviews the matter and judges whether the Home Secretary has acted unreasonably makes the level of proof that much lower again. We have an accumulation of effects that reduce the proposal to acting on suspicion, the dangers of which are large.
	To answer the right hon. Gentleman directly, the question that we will be pressing through the course of the Bill is whether it is capable of being turned into something consistent with long-standing traditions of British justice and will help in the fight against terrorism, rather than give ammunition to our enemies.

William Cash: Has my right hon. Friend noticed that the provisions relating to the repeal of sections 21 to 32 in part 4 take effect on 14 March? On the same date, of course, the Bill will be enacted or, at least, will be passed by the House. The problem is that there will then be two different rules of law applying, because the repeals that are set out specifically are kept, in effect, during the continuation of appeals. It appears, subject to discussion in Committee, that there will be two sets of laws operating at the same time, which will create even more confusion.

David Davis: I accept my hon. Friend's expertise in the matter. I had not considered the point and it is not central to the thrust of what I am saying. However, I take his pointit indicates, yet again, that this is an ill-thought-through Bill.

John Denham: The right hon. Gentleman must pursue the questions that he has set out in these discussions. He has been in his job for some time and must have formed a view now as to whether there is a group of people who cannot be prosecuted in the courts, but against whom action needs to be taken. Does he accept that such a group exists, in which case could he tell the House today what action he thinks should be taken against it?

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman has been in his job for quite a time, too, and he knows that I am paid to make decisions and not to think out loud. We are trying to ensure that the measure works as well as it can. Also, we have said, in terms, that there are other Bills or laws that ought to be enacted to give the Home Secretary greater powers and to widen his net. At the moment, there are no such powers. As the Home Secretary has said, there have been 701 arrests, approximately 400 prosecutionsa little less than half on terrorist issues, with many others on immigration and other issuesand 17 convictions so far. For three and a half years we have managed to maintain the safety of the public, and the security services have done a very good job in that regard.
	What has changed in the past three and a half weeks? If the Home Secretary had been saying for six months, Look, we are concerned about British subjects being a terrorist threat and we need to deal with this, and if we had talked the matter through in some detail and been able as a House of Commons to come to a considered balance between the threat to the publicwhich is never as quantifiable as the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) describes, incidentallyand the ancient rights of the British people, I would be in a frame of mind much more amenable to his question.
	We now have essentially two weeks to try to put together the follow-on from a Bill that itself was so ill drafted that it has fallen to pieces in the hands of the Government, and that is not a very good way to secure the future security, or indeed the future liberty, of British subjects.
	I was rather sorry that the Home Secretary was not present at the previous debate, because I was going to tease him a little. He and I were at university at approximately the same time, and no doubt we both read the fashionable left-wing writers in those days.

Charles Clarke: indicated dissent.

David Davis: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head and claims that only I, a Conservative student leader at the time, read them when he did not. Fair enough. But one of the things that they all clearly argued was that one of the primary aims of a terrorist is to provoke a reaction from the state, which in turn will radicalise a part of the population and recruit them for the terrorist cause. There is a serious danger of that if the use of these control orders is seen to be unjust, even by a minority, and that alone should be a telling argument for the power being exercised by the judiciary, not by the Executive.
	After three years in which none of these powers has been available against British citizens, at a time when the Home Secretary himself says that the security risk is the same as it was a year ago and the security services and police say that they currently do not need the most draconian powers listed here, why do we suddenly need this measure in 14 days flat in the shadow of a general election? The Prime Minister said that the security services say that they need them. Did they tell him that in the past few weeks? Did they tell him that they needed them instantly? I doubt it.
	To reiterate, the Home Secretary is taking powers to curb the freedom of British subjects by order, on suspicion, based on limited and possibly doubtful evidence. He does this after his own Department said that the measure was draconian and unjustifiable less than a year ago, and he does it after no apparent change in the circumstances, in a rushed Bill with wholly inadequate scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament. That cannot be the way for a democracy that believes in the rule of law to proceed.
	Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a former Law Lord who has great expertise in this area, said that the Home Secretary
	can confine British citizens for the first time in our history to house arrest. There are upwards of a thousand British citizens suspected of having links with Al-Qa'eda terrorism. Up until now, it has been possible to contain the threat without these special powers. The question is: why has it suddenly become necessary to impose these quite exceptional control orders?
	That is the question that the Home Secretary must now answer.

Brian Sedgemore: As this will almost certainly be my last speech in Parliament, I shall try hard not to upset anyone. However, our debate here tonight is a grim reminder of how the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are betraying some of Labour's most cherished beliefs. Not content with tossing aside the ideas and ideals that inspire and inform ideology, they seem to be giving up on values too. Liberty, without which democracy has no meaning, and the rule of law, without which state power cannot be contained, look to Parliament for their protection, but this Parliament, sad to say, is failing the nation badly. It is not just the Government but Back-Bench Members who are to blame. It seems that in situations such as this, politics become incompatible with conscience, principle, decency and self-respect. Regrettably, in such situations, the desire for power and position predominates.
	As we move towards a system of justice that found favour with the South African Government at the time of apartheid and which parallels Burmese justice today, if hon. Members will pardon the oxymoron, I am reminded that our fathers fought and died for libertymy own father literallybelieving that these things should not happen here, and we would never allow them to happen here. But now we know better. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, is happening here.
	In their defence, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary say that they are behaving tyrannically and trying to make nonsense of the House of Lords decision in A and Others as appellants v. the Home Secretary as respondent because they are frightened, and that the rest of us would be frightened too if only we knew what they will not tell us. They preach the politics of fear and ask us to support political incarceration on demand and punishment without trial.
	Sad to say, I do not trust the judgment of either our thespian Prime Minister or our Home Secretary, especially given the latter's performance at the Dispatch Box yesterday. It did not take Home Office civil servants or the secret police long to put poison in his water, did it? Paper No. 1, entitled International Terrorism: the Threat, which the Home Secretary produced yesterday and I have read, is a putrid document if it is intended to justify the measure. Indeed, the Home Secretary dripped out bits of it and it sounded no better as he spoke than it read. Why does he insult the House? Why cannot he produce a better argument than that?
	How on earth did a Labour Government get to the point of creating what was described in the House of Lords hearing as a gulag at Belmarsh? I remind my hon. Friends that a gulag is a black hole into which people are forcibly directed without hope of ever getting out. Despite savage criticisms by nine Law Lords in 250 paragraphs, all of which I have read and understood, about the creation of the gulag, I have heard not one word of apology from the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary. Worse, I have heard no word of apology from those Back Benchers who voted to establish the gulag.
	Have we all, individually and collectively, no shame? I suppose that once one has shown contempt for liberty by voting against it in the Lobby, it becomes easier to do it a second time and after that, a third time. Thus even Members of Parliament who claim to believe in human rights vote to destroy them.
	Many Members have gone nap on the matter. They voted: first, to abolish trial by jury in less serious cases; secondly, to abolish trial by jury in more serious cases; thirdly, to approve an unlawful war; fourthly, to create a gulag at Belmarsh; and fifthly, to lock up innocent people in their homes. It is truly terrifying to imagine what those Members of Parliament will vote for next. I can describe all that only as new Labour's descent into hell, which is not a place where I want to be.
	I hope thatbut doubt whetherethical principles and liberal thought will triumph tonight over the lazy minds and disengaged consciences that make Labour's Whips Office look so ridiculous and our Parliament so unprincipled.
	It is a foul calumny that we do today. Not since the Act of Settlement 1701 has Parliament usurped the powers of the judiciary and allowed the Executive to lock up people without trial in times of peace. May the Government be damned for it.

Mark Oaten: I wish the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) well in his retirement if that was indeed his last speech. Although I do not agree with all the points that he made, I admire his passion and commitment.
	We are dealing with extraordinarily complex circumstances. It is easy for us to make the sort of speech that the hon. Gentleman delivered, draw on historical values and discuss the strong principles of justice that are changing. I do not intend to make such a speech. I shall leave that to others who are more eloquent and have a stronger sense of history than me. In the next 20 minutes or so, I shall treat the subject as a practical issue, ascertain whether we can find a way forward and bluntly analyse where there is agreement and disagreement.
	Let me begin with agreement. There is probably cross-party agreement that none of us underestimates the issues that we are tackling in this post-9/11 era. None of us underestimates the serious terrorist problems. The Home Secretary's analysis of how matters have changed was spot on. The global implications that he outlined are especially important. They have made the world in which we live differentnot only the type of terrorists but their ability to operate globally, with all the communications systems that exist, have changed enormously.
	I think there is also agreementcross-party agreementon the fact that we have due respect for the intelligence services, and owe them a great debt of gratitude for what they have done over the past three or four years. We want, on a cross-party basis, to give them all the tools that they need in order to do their work. There is also agreement, I believe, that we must do something about the current situation. I am uneasy about what may happen in four or five weeks. If we have no legislation we will create a vacuum, and I do not think we want that. Something must be done to deal with the difficult circumstances.

David Davis: I took the precaution of finding out before the debate what would happen if the Bill were not passed. I do not know whether it will be passed at this point, but if it falls there will still be time on the last day for part 4 to be extended by however many months are necessary. The Government can do that instantly if they need to.

Mark Oaten: I will say later whether I think that that is the right thing to do. My starting point is that we should all agree that we must achieve something on 14 March. We cannot allow a vacuum to exist because of political differences; we absolutely must do something.
	There is a fourth area of agreement. I think that the Government have been forced to reach that agreement, but in any event they now agree with us that the current measures are not acceptable. We have felt that for some time, as have the official Opposition. Because of the Law Lords' ruling, we have at least secured an acknowledgement from the Home Secretary that we cannot maintain the present situation, particularly in relation to the Belmarsh detainees.

Simon Hughes: For the past four years, while we have been arguing collectively with the Government, we have consistently said that there is an alternative to detention without trial and have consistently proposed constructive alternatives. The Government have put themselves in this position by refusing to listen during those four years.

Mark Oaten: When my hon. Friend was doing the job that I am now doing, he was clear about our determination, whenever we had to decide what to do with a derogation, not to ignore it but to suggest alternatives. I take that approach as well. We have made such suggestions at various times, and we could have had this debate some time ago, but at least we are having it now, and I think it is agreed that we must now move on.
	There is agreement on another matterhelped, I think, by what I considered to be a constructive speech by the Home Secretary. He reiterated that prosecution should be the starting point, and I think we all agree that we should seek prosecution in these cases. Nevertheless, I take the point made by a number of Members that it would be helpful to enshrine that starting principle in the Bill. At present, we have only the Home Secretary's words, and, as some of his hon. Friends have suggested, the principle does not come across strongly enough.
	There is some agreement on another issue, which, although we have not discussed it yet, is relevant. Our long-term objective is an international situation in which deportation is a proper solution. I shall deal later with the respects in which we disagree with that, but there is surely consensus that we must be heading there at some point.
	I am now convinced of the Home Secretary's arguments that in relation to the current detainees, intercept communication would not have been a useful tool for the purpose of achieving prosecution. I shall deal with the differences between us later, but in the context of that narrow aspect I accept that intercept communication would not have dealt with the existing problem.
	There has been some interesting movement on control orders this afternoon. For some time we have argued against a black-and-white approach, suggesting that another tool is needed to deal with the complex issues and that control orders would be useful. There are differences on how they should be introduced, and I shall say something about that shortly, but at least there seems to be cross-party consensus that control orders have a role to play. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), who is having a little natter at the moment, implied earlier that the Conservatives were prepared to consider them in some shape or form. Let us bank that, and see if we can move on. We may not like control ordersI am not wild about them myselfbut hey, we are trying to find a sensible solution to all these problems.

Dominic Grieve: I accept that one may have to swallow the extremely unpalatable, but every hon. Member should be concerned about the principle of control orders. It is a departure from our established principles and threatens our liberties greatly.

Mark Oaten: I do not underestimate any of that, and I shall explain how we can make the control orders work and deal with our principles. One has to have other schemes to deal with this issue in addition to the possibility of jail. We have been prepared to say that we will look at control orderssubject, obviously, to the principles that I shall outline later.

Clare Short: I am not convinced of the case for control orders. I am absolutely convinced of the case for keeping people under surveillance. In fact, I want them to be listened to on the telephone. I want our security services to find out who they are in touch with and get the information if there is a plot. We can then use that information and arrest. The hon. Gentleman does no honour to his party by so quickly giving away the principle.

Mark Oaten: I would not say that I have given that away quickly, or that an enormous issue of principle is involved in control orders. The issue is: how do we impose those control orders and on what standard of proof do we impose them? Those are pretty big principles and I shall fight for them, but I am prepared to throw control orders into the equation of the debate to try to find an alternative to holding detainees in the way that they are currently held.
	The next area where there is some agreement, or at least where some progress has been made, is the Home Secretary's acknowledgement that there needs to be some judicial involvement in this process. We disagree about where that should be, but it is worth putting on the record that we welcome the fact that, in arguing that the judicial process should be a reviewing mechanism, he has at least moved to strengthen the reviewing mechanism. Derogating control orders will be referred automatically within seven days and judges will be able to look at the evidence independently, rather than just making an assessment following the Home Secretary's decision, which is welcome.
	There remain peculiarities in the proposals. The point has been made about the powers that judges would have to redirect the Home Secretary. That raises the question whether the Home Secretary would be bound to listen or could play ping-pong back and forth between the judges.
	There is agreement on a point about which I know the Home Secretary cares a lot. He argues continually that he has responsibility for national security. We agree, but we do not necessarily agree that that means he must have the power to make these decisions separate from a judge. We believe that he could keep and fulfill that responsibility while meeting the requirements. The Home Secretary has responsibility for national security, but not for reviewing individuals case by case in the way he suggests.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: The hon. Gentleman speaks warmly of the Government's advance towards judicial review, but has not he picked up the point that there is no judicial review of a control order that deals with the restriction on movement, the restriction in respect of work, the restriction in respect of association, the restriction in respect of residence, where someone can live, whether they have a passport, whether they are to be tagged, who they talk to, and whether they can talk or not? There is no judicial review on any of those issues. Have the Liberal Democrats not picked that up yet?

Mark Oaten: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to be helpful, but I was going through the bits that I agree with. If he will give me time, I shall get on to the bits that I disagree with. However, let us try to be constructive and say, Where can I, from my perspective, bank an agreement? On derogating control orders, there has been some movement from the Government to acknowledge that the judicial review process should be strengthened. I do not think that that is the right way forward, but I acknowledge that they have made some movement in that direction.

Douglas Hogg: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mark Oaten: Before I am criticised for supporting the Government, I would like to get on to the bits that I disagree with, but I give way.

Douglas Hogg: Even if one is trying to improve judicial oversight, it is essential that the interests of the detained person are properly represented. Does the hon. Gentleman accept the critique by Lord Carlile of the role of special counsel? It is plain that the special advocate can barely discuss a case with the detained person.

Mark Oaten: I entirely agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That is indeed one of the weaknesses that we are trying to highlight.
	Having acknowledged some movement on areas of agreement, let us now move on to areas of disagreement and then perhaps seek some ways forward. I want to deal quickly with deportation. We disagree because we would like much stronger reassurances on human rights issues. It is not satisfactory for Ministers to be exchanging memorandums on these issues. The orders must be binding and tested, and we must have some reassurance that, before we proceed with any deportations, proper human rights principles are in place.
	We disagree about intercept communications, but the Home Secretary said that he wants to leave the door open. When he made his statement yesterday, I suggested that one way to make progress would be to re-establish the Newton committee or some other body to consider sensible ways in which we could use intercept in certain cases in six months' time.
	The main area of fundamental disagreement is the point at which the judicial process kicks in. The Home Secretary believes and insists that it should be after the event; we believe that it should be at the beginning of the process. There is a big gulf between us and it is difficult to see how we can find a way forward as the Bill proceeds through Parliament. It is an important principlenot just a matter of having a timeline and deciding when things should happenbecause a politician is being given the ability to restrict the liberties enjoyed in this country solely on the balance of probabilities. That represents a break with years of our history and the Liberal Democrats are extremely uncomfortable with it.

Rob Marris: I share the hon. Gentleman's concerns, as I believe that the Home Secretary should make an application to a judge in the first instance to get the process moving. My right hon. Friend has already agreed today to have another look at the problem. If, after further reflection, it were decided that the application should first go to a judge rather than to the Home Secretary, would the Liberal Democrats support the Bill?

Mark Oaten: I want to be as transparent and open as possible about this matter, and if we saw some real movement, we would certainly be in the business of debating some of our other concerns about the Bill.
	That deals with one critical issue. I am trying to be as helpful as possible, so I shall move on to raise some further issues on which we want reassurance. My hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) provided another compelling reason for ensuring that judges are involved at the start of the process when he referred to the continual embarrassment of the Home Secretary in having his decisions overturned by judges as time goes on. That is a strong argument.
	Our next major disagreement is over standards of proof. I acknowledge that the wording has now moved a little in the right direction, but not far enough for us. As the Bill proceeds, we must carefully examine the different standards of proof that apply, particularly when we are talking about depriving individuals of their liberty. The highest standards must apply when we are contemplating house arrest or detention, but I disagree with the idea that it is acceptable to have reduced standards of proof for some lower-level control orders. Fundamental issues about liberty may still be at stake when methods other than house arrestcurfew and tagging, for exampleare adopted. People are deprived of their liberty in those cases, too, so we would require a great deal of convincing that lower standards of proof were acceptable.
	The same applies to the issue of whether evidence can be heard. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, intervened on the shadow Home Secretary to ask about the effect of these issues on the operation of control orders. I accept that, in some circumstances, it is not possible to bring in all the evidence, but we want a sensible debate with the Government about ensuring that as much evidence as possible, and the highest possible standards of proof, are used in these cases.

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman is trying to be constructive, as I am. Would he accept the balance of probabilities as a standard of proof in clause 1 cases? Would that be acceptable?

Mark Oaten: I am not prepared to concede that at the moment. I would want further discussions about a range of possibilities on standards of proof.

Alan Beith: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to make it clear that a judge's decision relates to non-derogating as well as to derogating orders? Both are eventually subject to judicial review, contrary to what was stated earlier, but should not the initial decision in respect of both types of order be made by a judge?

Mark Oaten: I agree with my right hon. Friend.
	On derogation, we have a peculiar situation. The Home Secretary argues that he will not require derogation in respect of house arrest, but seems to want to have it available in the bottom drawer of the Bill so that he can revisit it at some point. So far, no one has made it clear why a derogation may be necessary. The relevant wording is quite powerful and makes it clear that a derogation should be imposed only when there is an
	exceptional situation or crisis that affects the whole population and constitutes a threat to the organised life of the community of which the state is comprised.
	We should be under no doubt that a derogation demands quite a high level of threat. Moreover, the House should recall that this country is the only member of the Council of Europe that requires a derogation.

Dominic Grieve: A moment ago, the hon. Gentleman raised the question of the standard of proof. It is all very well to say that we want to raise it, but the central principle of normal justice systems is that the other side is able to put its case, which means that it must be in a position to answer an allegation. Does he agree that we must be aware that buzz phrases such as standard of proof and balance of probabilities can easily become meaningless when the system being devised is unfair?

Mark Oaten: The hon. Gentleman is right, which is why judges should make the assessments, and why we must ensure that defendants understand the evidence. For people to be able to defend themselves, they must be able to understand the charge. Preventing miscarriages of justice means that they must also be able to see the evidence.

Douglas Hogg: The hon. Gentleman is approaching the question of whether there is a threat to the life of the nation. Is he aware of what Lord Hoffmann said in the Belmarsh case? He said:
	I do not underestimate the ability of fanatical groups of terrorists to kill and destroy, but they do not threaten the life of the nation. Whether we would survive Hitler hung in the balance, but there is no doubt but that we will survive Al-Qaeda.

Mark Oaten: The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes an important point. The question of the derogation must be matched against the judgment of the Law Lords, to make sure that we meet the very strong demands that derogation would require when we take away people's liberty.
	My second point in respect of derogation is that we are not convinced that some of the lesser issues covered by control orders would not also require some form of derogation. When the Home Secretary made his statement yesterday, I asked what legal advice he had received on that question. It would be helpful if that advice could be published within the next 48 hours, for example, so that we can see what assessment has been made as to whether the various control orders require a derogation.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman spoke about meeting the Law Lords' requirements, but he ought to read everything that they said. Several of the Law Lords said that they did not think that this injustice could be solved by extending it to all British citizens.

Mark Oaten: The shadow Home Secretary mentions another interesting matter. We have not probed the Home Secretary on that yet, but it will be interesting to know how far he expects the Bill to help in an area where he has previously lacked legal support. We have been talking about foreign nationals, but we have not asked how much the Home Secretary and the intelligence services believe they need the Bill to help with British nationals. When the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety winds up the debate, I hope that she will say whether she envisages that about 100 or 150 control orders will be issued in the future. Conversely, is it her assumption that the proposed new system will deal with roughly the same numbers of people as is presently the case with foreign nationals?
	I have set out where my party agrees with the Government in this matter, and where we disagree. I now want to float some suggestions for a possible way forward in a number of areas. We could achieve cross-party support on control orders and the point at which the Home Secretary would become involved in the process. In exchanges at Prime Minister's Question Time today and during the Home Secretary's statement yesterday, it became clear that there were two barriers to the Home Secretary's agreeing to our suggestion that he should apply to a court in the first place. First, he argues strongly that he has national responsibility for making the decision. We believe that he would not be derogating from that duty if he assessed the intelligence information himself, made a judgment and then applied to a court. I cannot see how that route would leave him open to criticism for failing to meet his responsibilities.
	Secondly, objections were expressed both by the Home Secretary and strongly today by the Prime Minister about the time issue. Again, I think we can overcome them. As hon. Members have said, individuals can currently be held for 14 days. I have received legal advice that that may not be adequate to help the Home Secretary with the difficulty of dealing with terrorists. The ability to hold an individual for 14 days is based on the assumption of an investigation taking place and a charge being made. If that were the case, we would work constructively with the Home Secretary to find another way to allow him a limited emergency power for a short period on the assumption that all that was being done was that an individual was being held before the Home Secretary applied to the court for an interim order to start the judicial process. We accept that all the papers and arguments might not be forthcoming within 24 hours. However, because an interim order would be in operation, we would allow some time to elapse so that the papers and the full case for a control order could be advanced. I believe that that meets the concerns about the Home Secretary fulfilling his responsibilities for national security. It would meet the concerns that he and the Prime Minister have expressed about time scales, as he could act the minute that he had the intelligence information. It would also meet the concerns of Liberal Democrats and other hon. Members about the need for a proper judicial process. I hope that in Committee we will have a sensible dialogue about those issues.

David Kidney: The hon. Gentleman and the shadow Home Secretary advanced the premise that everyone who is served with a control order is already in police custody, but that will not necessarily be the case. Would the hon. Gentleman consider making another suggestion to the Home Secretary: that he should be able to go to the judge in the absence of the individual concerned to get a control order served, then the court proceedings could carry on?

Mark Oaten: I am happy to accept that suggestion, as it is precisely what I was arguing. I assumed that there were no control orders in place and that we were dealing with a fresh piece of intelligence. What, for example, would the Home Secretary do if he were about to have supper on a Saturday night when he received a phone call at 7 o'clock and was given fresh intelligence? I want to find a helpful way of enabling him to manage that process. We could find a further way forward if we secured a promise and a commitment to look at where and at what point different standards of proof apply. It would also be helpful if the Home Secretary gave, first, a commitment to look again at intercept communication with a proper organised structure and timetable and, secondly, an early commitment to consider seriously new laws on acts preparatory to terrorism. That is the constructive approach that we will take in the next week or so as the Bill proceeds through both Houses.
	I shall conclude with the dilemma of what we do with the current detainees in Belmarsh.

Alan Beith: I wish to raise a matter that my hon. Friend mentioned earlier. We have to do something with special advocate procedures and the disclosure rules that surround them if any process is to become viable. As these matters will not be for the Special Immigration Appeals Commission but for the High Court or the Court of Session, there must be a processthe Home Secretary has not yet explained what it iswhereby those courts have the authority to decide what those procedures will be.

Mark Oaten: My right hon. Friend is right, and that can be added to my list of issues that we need to discuss.
	Finally, on the question of what we do with the current detainees held in Belmarsh, the Home Secretary's statement yesterday that he does not intend to trigger the requirement for house arrest suggests that two things will happen. First, on 14 March, if he gets the Bill through Parliament, he would release the individuals from Belmarsh and, I assume, put them on to a tagging system or perhaps a lower level of surveillance. Secondly, he would release the individual held under house arrest with some form of tagging. It would be helpful to know what plans the Home Secretary has for those individuals and whether my assumption about what will happen is accurate.
	The problem remains that, if we cannot reach agreement on the Bill and it is impossible to reach agreement on renewal of derogation along the lines suggested by the shadow Home Secretary, we have a responsibility to do something about those individuals, and certainly not to leave them in Belmarsh for an extended period because we fail to come to a decision. When the Minister winds up, I hope she will say how we can have a constructive discussion about what we should do with those people. It is a shame that they are being held in Belmarsh when the Home Secretary has stated that it is not his intention to hold them there. The sooner we can resolve that problem, the better.
	The issue is all about a balance between civil liberties and ensuring the right security in this country. Our judgment is that the Government have had the wrong balance for the past three years, but we acknowledge that it is improving. It is still not right, but there is good will on our side to move that balance in a direction to enable Liberal Democrat Members to support these measures. However, we are a long way from that yet.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has imposed a 15-minute limit on all Back-Bench speeches. That applies from now on.

John Denham: I am prepared to make it clearthe shadow Home Secretary was notthat a group of people exists on whom the Government have evidence that they cannot bring to court and against whom it should be necessary to take action. If I have time, I shall develop my reasons for believing that, but I make that statement of my belief for the purpose of my initial comments.
	I am primarily concerned in this debate to achieve the right practical outcomes in terms of human rights, civil liberties and our ability to tackle terrorism. An overly legalistic debate on such matters is not always helpful and there is a certain amount of self-flagellation in our approach to such issues in this country. Across the channel, the legal procedures are apparently different. However, the reality is that people are detained for up to four years without trial, and that a regime exists which the French authorities believe leads many people to leave France because they are worried about detention powers. Under that regime, the Government deport people to many countries to which our legal system finds it impossible to deport people. I am not giving a view on whether that is right, but it is a reality in the modern world. Some of the suggestions made during this debatethat we are putting ourselves beyond the pale with our proposalssimply do not recognise the reality of what happens in other countries.
	I want to focus on an exchange that I had with the Home Secretary earlier and to move slightly away from whether the Home Secretary or judges should make the initial decision on control orders. I believe that the practical outcome of those two different approaches would not be wildly different. The issue of principle is a major difference, but the practical outcome in terms of who is detained is not likely to be so great.
	We could argue that the Government should change their position or that the Opposition have no basis for bringing down the legislation here or in another place, but I want to focus on what happens at an earlier stage in the process. In either model at the moment, the intelligence services and, perhaps, the police present a case to the Home Secretary, which he decides there and then, or takes to a judge. I firmly believe that we need to focus our attention on the process between the advice from the security services and whatever action the Home Secretary then takes. That is critical to the integrity of the decision making. After all, the Home Secretary is not simply deciding in his model whether to issue a control order. He is implicitly taking several different decisions. He is deciding not to prosecute. He is deciding not to carry on looking for further evidence. He is deciding not to rely only on surveillance.
	We knowat least, we are toldthat the Home Secretary will consider those alternatives, and he has repeatedly said that his preference is to prosecute when possible. The problem for the Home Secretary and for the House is that under the current proposals he has no way to demonstrate that he has considered the alternatives and chosen control orderswhether he makes them himself or applies to a judgeas the best option.

Alistair Carmichael: Why does the right hon. Gentleman assume that no further investigation would take place because a control order had been made? A control order would not be a barrier to further investigation.

John Denham: That is true, but in practical policing terms, once an individual had been alerted by the existence of a control order, the chances of picking up further information that might lead to prosecution would be greatly lessened. In other jurisdictions, such as the French, the process, which usually involves the investigating magistrate and the Ministry of Justice, allows a rational choice to be made between the options.

Douglas Hogg: If the ability to make a control order existed, the Home Secretary would not be under very much pressure to authorise further surveillance or make an attempt to prosecute. He could simply rely on the control order.

John Denham: Indeed, and each Member of the House might have to face a constituent whose son, daughter, mother, brother or father is subject to a control order asking for an assurance that it was not only an appropriate response but the most appropriate response. The current procedure would not allow us, or the Home Secretary, to demonstrate that.
	Equally, it is not appropriate to ask a judge to make the judgment between different strategiesthat is a crucial point. Judges are equipped to take a yes/no decision: they are not equipped, trained or given the remit to choose between three or four different strategies. Therefore, we need to add to the system a process of choosing between the different options. That is something that we could learn from the French system, in which the procedures involving the Ministry of Justice and investigating magistrates appear to allow more proactive consideration of different options.
	My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary could make that change with limited, and possibly no, additional statutory powers. He could invite the Director of Public Prosecutions to review in every case the evidence, information and files, and to certify whether a case was prosecutable, to see whether further evidence could be gathered, or to discuss with the appropriate authorities whether continued surveillance would be possible.
	If we adopted a proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), a simple amendment could place a statutory requirement on the Home Secretary to examine those options and to make that part of whatever judicial process followed. Indeed, if one wished to be inventive and constructive, some judicial skills could be involved in that process. If we did that, the Home Secretary could demonstrate, for each individual case, that the alternative approaches had been independently reviewed.
	Some may argue that that option would mean a massive change in the role of the DPP in this country. However, over the past 18 months, as the Crown Prosecution Service has developed CPS charginginstead of the police always doing the chargingwe have seen greater day-by-day co-operation between the CPS and the police on the question of relevant and appropriate evidence. In other words, we have moved slightly closer to the more investigatory role that other jurisdictions have. It would be no bad thing if the DPP were invited to play that role, given adequate vetting and security.
	I think that my right hon. Friend would say, Look, as Home Secretary I receive legal advice on these cases; it is not simply a case of closeting myself away with MI5 and MI6 and having a look at the files. When I was a Home Office Minister, I never dealt with the individual cases of those held in Belmarsh, for example, but I did deal with two types of decision that are at least analogous to this one. The first involved the signing of public interest immunity certificates in terrorist cases coming before the courts, and the second involved agreeing stop-and-search powers under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
	The truth is that Ministers get legal advice from Home Office officials on PII certificates. I intend no criticism of those officials, but Ministers know that they have worked very closely with the security services in presenting the advice according to which Ministers are invited to sign PII certificates. In my experience, it was quite difficult to feel that the advice one received was wholly independent and objective, and I found going through the relevant files an extremely time-consuming process.

John Taylor: When Ministers sign PII certificates, they are not making any decision beyond deciding to put matters before a judge, who will have the last word. The Minister makes the application, and the judge makes the decision in the interests of justice.

John Denham: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I am simply trying to highlight the difficulty experienced by the Home Secretary in relying on internal legal advice in considering these processes, compared with having an independent body such as the DPP examine such cases. The situation was very much the same in respect of section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Ministers could rely on advice telling them to rule out something illegal, but they could be much less confident that the option being offered to them was the best and most appropriate use of the power. This is a critical issue, because a control order is a very significant order. The point is not just that using one should be legal, but that it should be the most appropriate power to use in the circumstances.
	There is not much time to consider this issue, but as the House has heard, my view is that introducing such a procedure would greatly strengthen my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary's proposals, which I will vote for tonight, because he has given much consideration to the question of who initiates such decisions, for example. This procedure would make the decision-making process better.
	I will conclude by making two quick points. I suspect that when we confront this issue with our Muslim constituents in particularit is they who are most likely to feel aggrieved at the new measureswe will find that the difficulty lies not so much in whether the Home Secretary takes the decision and a judge confirms it, or whether a judge takes the decision, but in whether the other options, including the possibility of prosecution, have been adequately explored. We must build in a procedure that enables us to say with absolute confidence that the latter is the case. As the shadow Home Secretary rightly said, we have to look at all such laws and measures in terms of their impact on wider community cohesion, and on our ability to get all communities in society behind us. We must prevent these issues from becoming those on which radical elements focus in order to spread their poisonous views.
	My second point is that there is a big issue of principle for many of us in extending these powers to British citizens. However, we must be realistic, and in my judgment the type of terrorism that we currently face will be with us for many years to come. Nothing in our past experience of terrorism, or that we can see in the international situation, suggests that the threat is likely to diminish. We already know that some British citizens have been involved in international terrorist activities associated with al-Qaeda, and it would be astonishingly naive to believe that we will not confront that threat in years to come. It is necessary to have a legislative framework that deals with both foreign nationals and British citizens, which is why it is important that we get the legislation on the statute book and why we should not think that we do not need to tackle the problem with considerable urgency.

Peter Lilley: Nearly all of us in the House accept that the Home Secretary is right when he says that we face a qualitatively different threat, so it behoves us at least to consider whether it is necessary to curtail to some degree traditional civil liberties in this country. I accept that, to some degree, that may be so, but we should try to secure the life of the people of this country with the minimum loss of their liberties.
	For my part, if there is to be a loss I would try to limit it to the smallest group of people, which in the first instance seems to be foreign nationals, rather than extending the loss of liberty to British citizens as a whole. I would want to minimise the reduction in the burden of proof and the procedures for proof, which are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) rightly pointed out, equally important. Above all, I would want to minimise reliance on political decisions rather than independent judicial decisions. That is where I take a completely different line from what the Government are proposing in the Bill.
	Normally, when we consider matters of this gravity, the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Government seek consensus. They try to take a balanced approach and to eschew partisan rhetoric and point scoring, to maximise support for any reduction in liberty or curtailment of our freedoms. Sadly, that has not been true on this occasion. The Government have made rather pathetic attempts to use the Bill both to burnish their own credentials and to tarnish the Opposition's credentials on the treatment of terrorism. I have to say that that makes it more difficult to give them support, because we cannot but have doubts when powers are introduced in a partisan manner that they may be used in a partisan manner. We remember all too well how the Government were prepared to summon tanks to Heathrow when that was helpful to them, but not to explain subsequently why the tanks were there.

John Denham: rose

Peter Lilley: I will give way in a moment, as I tend to say rather nice things about the right hon. Gentleman, who made an important and valuable contribution to the debate.
	Ministers are responsible to the House for securing our lives and upholding our liberties. They should be responsible to the House for putting in place systems for securing that rather than for putting individuals away simply on the Government's say-so. Sadly, Ministers are trying to take powers that would give them personal responsibility for putting people away, while avoiding full accountability to the House by curtailing debate on the Bill in a shameful way and putting the responsibility on others who are not accountable.
	At Prime Minister's questions today, the Prime Minister repeatedly invoked what he described as the unanimous recommendation of the police and all the security agencies for the measures that the House is considering. It is wrong in principle for Ministers to invoke their public servants, who are not accountable, to justify measures that those who are accountable are proposing to the House. There are a number of reasons why we should not accept the advice of the security forces without first questioning, probing and evaluating it and weighing it up against other factors. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) was right to point out that that is the responsibility of Ministers. A Minister must take decisions on the basis of the advice that he is given, but it is his decision what advice he takes. If he takes bad advice, he is responsible if he has not first probed, tested and evaluated it and made it his own. We have to question the advice that we receive from the security forces and the police, because the Government must weigh security against liberty. The security forces have to consider only one thing. They do not have to put anything else in the other scale. They just have responsibility for trying to maximise the security of this country against security threats.
	Secondly, the police and secret services will always think that they know things that they cannot prove and will want to seek to avoid having to prove what they just suspect. Unfortunately, sometimes their suspicions turn out to be false, and they can turn out to be false on quite a large scale, not just on individual occasions. We should remember when taking these powers that the House granted a previous Government the power to introduce internment without trial in Northern Ireland. We should remember how that turned out. I quote from a note from the Library, which in turn quotes a book by Paul Wilkinson, which said:
	Internment or detention without trial, was introduced in 1972
	because it
	was argued that the normal judicial processes had proved incapable of providing essential protection for society. The police were hamstrung in their efforts to bring known terrorists to trial, and to have them convicted.
	But, as it turned out,
	many of those netted by the security forces had little or nothing to do with involvement in IRA terrorism.
	We know the consequences of that. They were threefold: it was not just, first, that individuals were wrongly interned and thereby often radicalised; it was that the guilty were left free to go on carrying out their terrorism; and the community was alienated and often shifted to supporting the very terrorists with which it had previously had no connection. That is why an early action of this Labour Government was to repeal from the statute book the power to introduce internment without trial.
	What the then Minister, Lord Dubs, said at the time was:
	The Government have long held the view that internment does not represent an effective counter-terrorism measure . . . Quite apart from any judgment about its appropriateness in principle, the fact is that internment has not worked in practice. Indeed many would say that it was a disaster when last used in the 1970s. There is nothing to suggest that it would be . . . more effective in the future . . . We cannot envisage any circumstances in which we would seek to deprive an individual of his or her liberty without trial and without the normal safeguards that the law provides for the protection of suspects. Such action would surely run counter to the rule of law as it is understood internationally.[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 January 1998; Vol. 584, c. 88990.]
	In fact, obliging the security forces to find convincing proof, rather than relying on suspicion, will enhance the security of the country, as well as protecting the liberty of the individual.

David Trimble: I do not wish to get into an argument with the right hon. Gentleman about precisely what happened in 1971 in Northern Ireland, but I should like to point out that, even if he takes the view that such measures failed then, he must put into the balance the fact that they were used successfully in the 1920s, 1940s and 1950s in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and of course in England and Wales during the first and second world wars. For that reason, he should not take up an absolute position against this reserve power, which might be necessary.

Peter Lilley: I thought that I made it clear that I was not taking up an absolute position against that power. I do accept that there may be a need for curtailment of liberties, but it is up to the Government to persuade us of that in proper and, if necessary, prolonged debate in the House, by investigating the evidence and experience of what has happened in the past and justifying, on the basis of that evidence and experience, what they propose to do in future. One thing that we cannot doubt is that many innocent people were rounded up on the say-so of the police and security authorities, who told Ministers that they knew who was doing it, that they could lock them up, but that they just could not prove it. It is important to remember that.

Patrick Cormack: Is not the fundamental problem that whereas it is absolutely right to say that it is far better for a guilty person to go free than for an innocent one to be punished, when we are dealing with not only homicidal but suicidal terrorists, surely we must set the greater good and the greater safety of the greater number as the first priority?

Peter Lilley: Indeed, but we should be cautious about doing that in ways that could tip more people into joining the very terrorist organisations that we fear. We should find ways that try to assess each individual, preferably before someone who is independent rather than political, rather than just taking the say-so of the security forces that they know best.
	A third reason why we should question, yet not reject, advice from the security forces is that they always have an interest in asking for more measures than they expect to get. When I was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, I was summoned to appear before the heads of all five agencies because they felt that something that I wished to doeven now, I cannot reveal it to the Housewould impinge on methods of surveillance of which I was previously unaware and of which I hope that all hon. Members are still unaware. I wanted none the less to introduce the changes, which have gone on to have a beneficial impact on this country's prosperity, so I argued against the agency heads. It eventually emerged that they could work round my proposals, so they let me go ahead, but they asked for more measures because they wanted to find out how much they could get. In the end, however, they were happy to get nothing and to work round the situation themselves.
	There are even greater reasons why the security forces ask for more than the Government can concede now. They know that if they are unable to prevent a major terrorism eventGod forbidit is better for them to be able to say that the Government refused them something than to say that the Government offered everything that had been asked for. The Government, in turn, seem to be playing much the same form of brinkmanship with the House by saying, If you reject this, we'll label you as soft on terrorism. It is important not that we reject the proposals before us, but that we deal with them sceptically and with great deliberation, and find out whether there are better ways of achieving the same result.
	Fourthly, the security forces will always want to keep the processes that they use under wraps. They sometimes want to do that for the good reason that terrorists do not know about these processes and they want to keep them secret so that they can continue to be used without the terrorists realising it. It is probably a little known fact in the House that I was acting Home Secretary for one weekend when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was abroad.

Elfyn Llwyd: Oh, that weekend!

Peter Lilley: It was a bank holiday weekend, so it was quite a long one. I found myself being invited to sign documents and permissions to do all sorts of interesting things. It was right for some of them to be kept secret, even though some processes were quite simple, as the IRA probably did not realise that they were being carried out. However, one felt that other processes were being kept secret simply to retain the mystique of the organisations, because they like having secrets and being able to say, We can tell you, Minister, but you mustn't tell anyone else.
	Departments have an interest in emphasising the importance of what they do, so the secret services and the police likewise have no incentive to understate the threats and risksboth general and specificthat the country faces. That is not to deny that we might face an enormous risk, as I said earlier, but we should want to assess and deliberate on each individual case with scepticism and put it to an independent legal test.

Tam Dalyell: Does the right hon. Gentleman recollect the case of Matrix Churchill and public interest immunity certificates? Does that not warn us to be extremely careful?

Peter Lilley: I would love to go down that line on another occasion, but there are better examples of why we should be careful.
	We should not ignore the advice of the security authorities either on policy or on individuals. We should take it extremely seriously. They are brave, honourable supporters of the state and the public interest. We should do what Ministers clearly failed to do in the case of weapons of mass destructionquestion, probe and evaluate any evidence that we receive from them before we adopt it, and then Ministers should adopt it in their own authority and not pass off the responsibility and blame to officials.
	Sadly, the Government are trying to escape responsibility for what they are doing. They are trying to escape proper debate about what they are doing. I believe that the outcome would be far healthier were the debate longer, and were we able to accept the advice from the Conservative Front Bench and prolong existing measures until we are sure that we are putting in place something that will ensure the security of the nation, which might involve some curtailment of liberties, but will, I hope, not go as far as saying that individuals can be put away on the say-so of a politician rather than an independent judicial source.

Chris Smith: As many Members from both sides of the House have observed, we must acknowledge at the outset of debates on these matters that they relate to the very difficult issue of the essential balance between public safety and individual liberty. In relation to judging where legislation should fall in order to strike the right balance, the Home Secretary has struggled with these extremely difficult and serious matters, as has the House. I spent a year of my life on the Newton committee struggling with the self-same issues in relation to the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
	We must also acknowledge that the Home Secretary has listened to some of the points and criticisms that have been made by Members from all parts of the House in recent months. I welcome the fact that he intends to discuss seriously with other countries the possibility of guarantees of fair treatment if deportation is seen as the appropriate action. I welcome the fact that he is considering a new offence of being concerned in terrorist acts. I also welcome the clear statement that he has given to the House today that prosecution with proper trial must always be the preferred choice if that option is available. The arguments put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) in relation to that and the need to strengthen that proposition are well made.
	Above all, I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary, in response to the Law Lords' Belmarsh judgment, has sought to introduce a range of charges and penalties that can be imposed so that a particular threat can be met with a proportionate response. That must be the right principle to adopt.
	As is the Home Secretary's wont, he has listened to a lot of what has been said to him and he has considered carefully the points that we made in the Newton report. Because he has made progress on these matters, I do not intend to join the Opposition parties in the Lobby tonight, but I fear that I cannot join my right hon. Friend in the Lobby either, because I remain very concerned about certain aspects of the Bill. I have one overarching concern, and I want to make three more detailed points.
	The fundamental point relates to that balance between public safety and individual liberty and justice. Let us never forget that the greatest victory that terrorism can have is if it forces us to abandon the very principles of liberty, democracy and the right to justice which we are all seeking to defend against terrorism. These principles should be abandoned only in the face of the utmost and urgent necessity, when the case is utterly compelling, when there is imminent proven danger and when there is absolutely no alternative to taking that action.

William Cash: The right hon. Gentleman should recall that during the war, when there were emergency powers, there was regulation 18B, but habeas corpus was still available. It was only because of a disgraceful case called Liversidge v. Anderson that all the issues relating to proper due trial and justice were overruled. That case has been effectively binned by subsequent decisions in the House of Lords. Habeas corpus still applied during the war in the extreme circumstances that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

Chris Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. He also reminds us usefully of the experience of the first and second world wars, the use of internment powers during those conflicts and the problems which arose for many individuals because of wrongful internment. Those are issues that we must always bear at the back of our minds.
	I accept the point made by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about the qualitative difference of present-day terrorism. However, I am not entirely convinced that such absolute circumstances in favour of extreme action exist here and now and require a decision to be taken, apparently, in the next five days. Deciding to take such a step because the security services say that it will be useful is not a sufficient reason for doing so. Of course they will say that the power will be useful. Of course they will say that they would like to have it. It is the job of Government and Parliament to test rigorously whether it is absolutely necessary.

John Redwood: The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he agree with me that, as a way forward, the Government could frame an amendment to the law against terrorism to capture and to meet their worries about people whom they are detaining or wish to detain? In that way a case could be brought in court against those people for whatever it is that they have done that has led the security forces to have such fears about them. I would have thought that everybody would then be happy that due process was being followed and that people who were likely to commit terrorist attacks could be captured by the law.

Chris Smith: I am not sure that I follow the right hon. Gentleman entirely in that. I accept that there may be a relatively small number of cases in which evidence is available to the security and police services that cannot be advanced in open court because of the source of that evidence, and that there must be some procedure to take account of those particular cases. It is because I accept that there is a possibility that that is an issue that I believe something along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is struggling to achieve may be necessary, but I do not think that he has got it completely right.

Mark Fisher: Does my right hon. Friend agree that exactly the same situation arose in Northern Ireland in relation to admissible evidence, and that that was dealt with over a number of years? Indeed, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) will know better than anyone in this place that it was dealt with without recourse to the powers that we are considering today.

Chris Smith: My hon. Friend is, of course, right. One can observe that the situation in Northern Ireland was dealt with rather successfully because a range of different approaches were taken to the issue, which, taken as a whole, provided an appropriate response.
	I said earlier that I have three detailed points of concern. First, I cannot understand the rush. In the Newton committee, we examined the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 in detail and looked at how it was brought on to the statute book. Our unanimous conclusion was that it never makes sense to legislate in haste on matters of such gravity. In response to the failures and flaws of the 2001 Act, which was introduced in haste, I fear that we are introducing further legislation in haste.
	There are ways of getting round the problem of urgency, to which both the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have alluded. It would be possible to extend the existing powers for a strictly limited period of time by agreement across the parties in this House. Especially in view of the fact that the Home Secretary has specifically said that he does not want to trigger the derogation powers that he is giving himself in the Bill, it is surely possible to leave that element out of the Bill entirely, rapidly to process the remainder of the Bill through the legislative procedures and to return to the derogation proposals and examine them at greater leisure. It is surely better to try to get it right than to get it quickly.
	Secondly, I fail to understand why the Home Secretary continues to refuse to consider the use of intercept evidence in court. I know that the security services are against such a proposal, but pretty well everyone else is in favour of it.

Lynne Jones: I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend is right to say that the security services are opposed to the use of intercept evidence. Stephen Lander, the former head of MI5, used to be in favour of ithe only changed his tune when he got his new job in the Serious Organised Crime Agencyand Stella Rimington and a range of other people from the security services support it.

Chris Smith: My hon. Friend is, of course, right to identify the fact that many authoritative voices are putting forward that particular view.
	Using intercept evidence in court is not a wholesale solution to the problems that we face, but it would help. It is used widely in other countries, including countries such as the United States that face similarly severe terrorist threats. In the Newton committee, we received evidence that evidence derived by the UK security services through intercept in the UK has already been used as evidence in open court in other countries. Legislation permitting the use of intercept evidence could protect the use of evidence that might genuinely endanger national security. Such evidence could be used on an optional rather than mandatory basis, but the blanket ban can and should be lifted.
	Thirdly, I remain concerned by the nature and process of judicial authorisation for control orders. I welcome the Home Secretary's acceptance that some judicial participation in the process is required, although what he is proposing in the Bill is limited and would occur only after the event. Imposing a control order first by political decree, and then only subsequently giving limited judicial consideration to it, runs the risk of unbalancing the whole process, because once an order is in place it is much more difficult to overturn and the burden of proof shifts with the status quo. The decision should be justified properly to a judge, even in some summary form, from the outset. I accept, of course, the issues that might arise over the speed of decision making, but I hope that, with a serious willingness to find a consensual way forward, it would be possible to derive a better system, perhaps by having a system of accredited judges on call for initial and rapid interim consideration of proposals made by the Home Secretary.
	These are difficult issues; they arise because we live in difficult times. But sometimes the apparently easiest answers are not necessarily the right ones. I hope that the Home Secretary will continue to give careful consideration to the genuine and serious concerns that many on the Labour Benches still have about the precise proposals that he has brought to the House today.

Boris Johnson: I hope that the House will forgive me if I begin by repeating some of the powers that the Home Secretary is about to take under this Bill: the power to lock someone up in their own house; the power to stop other people visiting that person; the power to remove any item of property from that person's house; the power to tag that person; the power to ask that person to surrender his or her passport, to report to a police station and to produce any information demanded of him in other words, the power to incarcerate that person.
	These powers are to be exercised against anyone whom the Home Secretary deems to be involved in a terrorism-related activity. Such a person is defined in the broadest possible terms as, for instance, someone engaged in conduct that gives support or assistance to individuals who are known or believed to be engaged in terrorism-related activities. It is the intention to detain such people without trial for an unlimited period, contrary to the most basic principles of English law.
	Why have we come to this position? These extraordinary control orders are made necessary because of the House of Lords ruling in December that rightly threw out part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. The Lords pointed out that it was absurd and discriminatory to detain a foreigner and not a UK national, since many of the suspects associated with al-Qaeda are known to be British. The Lords pointed out, furthermore, that it was nonsense to say that someone could present such a threat to the life of this country that he could be detained without trial and yet could be told that he was at all times free to leave this country and go and plot against this country abroad.

Douglas Hogg: Does my hon. Friend share my sense of astonishment that we have come to the point at which we are imposing such controls on British citizens as a consequence of an interpretation of the convention on human rights that was designed to protect the human rights of British citizens?

Boris Johnson: My right hon. and learned Friend adverts to a relevant paradox in the whole business. It is a sign of the Government's incompetence that they have been brought to this pass, because they had a choice. At the moment of reversal at the hands of the Lords, the Home Secretary could have ceased to derogate from article 5 of the convention on human rights and ceased to detain without trial, or he could have chosen to widen detention without trial so that all UK citizens could be banged up on his say-so.

William Cash: Will my hon. Friend note that, in Lord Newton's judgment, he prescribed that the new legislation should deal with all terrorism whatever its origin or the nationality of its suspected perpetrators, and should not require a derogation from the European convention on human rights? In other words, relying heavily on the European Commissioner for Human Rights' opinion of August 2002, the Government found themselves effectively boxed in by the prescriptive arrangements provided by the European convention and by the Human Rights Act 1998.

Boris Johnson: My hon. Friend is learned beyond my wildest dreams in matters connected with the European Union, and he makes an entirely valid point. I do not object so much to the fact of derogation from the European convention on human rights; what I object to in this widening of the principle of detention without trial to apply to all UK citizens is that what we are talking about is nothing less than the suspension of habeas corpus. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that when the state detains a person, they have the right to trial. To remove that basic right is a step that has been taken very few times in our history. It was taken in 1793, when William Pitt removed it following the execution of the King of France and in the revolutionary terror that swept Europe, and it was removed in 1817, opportunistically, by Lord Liverpool. As the Law Lords rightly said, habeas corpus, the right to trial, is a fundamental part of our liberties.
	We do not have that right by virtue simply of this European convention; we have it by virtue of 800 years of history and it is enshrined in the Habeas Corpus Act 1679. In order to take it away, the House must genuinely believe that there is a threat to our way of lifein other words, that we are at war. I accept what has been said from both sides of the House about the qualitative difference posed by the threat of al-Qaeda, but I do not believe that that threat is so extreme as to justify such an extension of the power of the state.
	It is a great shame that we cannot be told more about the al-Qaeda plots that have been foiled over the past few years. But it is worth pointing out that we have all lived through decades of IRA terrorism, and more British people died annually at the hands of the IRA in the '80s and during much of the '90s than have died since 11 September 2001 at the hands of al-Qaeda. We abandoned detention without trial in 1972 because Operation Motorman, in its attempt to suppress the IRA, proved to be such a failure. Why, therefore, are we reintroducing it now, when I do not believe that we face anything like a warlike threat?
	The Government say that our ancient liberty will be protected by the role of the judge who must review the demand of the Home Secretary for certification. On the face of it, as has already been said, that is a flimsy protection. The judge merely has to decide whether the Home Secretary has information capable of constituting reasonable grounds for the Home Secretary to make a control order. I think that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will agree that information capable of constituting reasonable grounds is a million miles away from properly satisfying a court that a man should be locked up.

Jeremy Corbyn: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the problems with that test is that the Home Secretary might indeed have reasonable grounds for believing somebody to be dangerous on the basis of security services evidence but he would have no way of challenging that, and no one else would either, even if it was proved at a later date to be completely inaccurate, and that a grotesque miscarriage of justice may have taken place in the meantime?

Boris Johnson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for so lucidly anticipating the very point that I was about to make. It may be relatively simple to satisfy a judge that the matters relied upon are capable of constituting grounds for a control order, but that is very different from properly testing, in the adversarial context of a court, whether the information is any good, or whether it has been laid before the Home Secretary by security services that may be either inaccurate or have an axe to grind.
	The Father of the House has already made an apposite point about our recent disappointments over weapons of mass destruction. Doubtless, it would have been possible to satisfy a judge that the matters relied upon in respect of the Belmarsh detainees constituted the ground for a control order. Yet several detainees are to be released following the Lords ruling and the Government tell us that, upon their release, they will not be suitable candidates for house arrest. In other words, they have been inside for three years, with the approval of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, yet now that they are to be released, the Home Secretary says that they are not candidates for derogating or non-derogating control orders. How can we have any confidence that the Bill will protect the innocent when years are already being taken out of people's lives, we do not put them on trial and, when they come out, we implicitly declare that their incarceration was pointless?
	I simply do not accept the Government's argument that allowing suspects the right to trial would prejudice sensitive wire-tapping techniques deployed by the intelligence services. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary have said, it is perfectly possible to have a system whereby a pre-trial judge could decide whether details of wire taps should be made available to the full court, and how to be fair to both the defence and the prosecution. That point was made by the right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who is my Member of Parliament.

Chris Smith: It is a burden that I wear lightly.

Boris Johnson: I am most grateful and I am glad that we are united on the subject of the debate. The right hon. Gentleman constructively outlined what the Government should do. He said that wire-tapping evidence should be admissible in court. It is a mystery to me that the Government reject his wise counsel. I should like to know why. I believe that they do so because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said, the Bill is a classic secret policeman's measure.
	I do not doubt the security services' good intentions. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that they have done a magnificent job in protecting us thus far from the undoubted threats that terrorists pose. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why the state feels it necessary to take new powers now. The control orders would be instantly recognisable not only to the old BOSS security services in South Africa, but to every secret police force, including the Cheka, OGPU, the NKVD and the Securitate.
	I cannot believe that Labour Members of Parliament entered politics to take away habeas corpus. I hope that the impassioned denunciation by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) will ring in the Home Secretary's capacious ears when he formulates the climbdown that so many of us, from all parties, hope that he will propose in the next few days.
	In a hotly contested field, the Bill is one of the worst Government measures that has been produced in my time in the House. No responsible Opposition could conceivably let it through unamended. It is reminiscent of the actions of some tottering Belgian coalition Government of the early 1970s, using the threat of terror as an excuse to enact repressive emergency measures that are never removed from the statute book. I hope that there will be a significant revolt in the Lobby tonight, and that it will be joined by the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who is about to speak.

Frank Dobson: I should perhaps declare an interest: the offices of The Spectator are in my constituency.
	No one can deny that the scale and, more particularly, the nature of terrorism have changed in recent times and that we must respond to that change. Up to now, our criminal justice system has been geared to the idea of detecting criminals after they have committed their crimes, and then punishing them. The threat from suicide bombers has changed that because, for them, the prospect of punishment is clearly no deterrent. We must therefore change some aspects of our system, the better to prevent terrorist crimes from being committed in the first place.
	That is why I supported the earlier prevention of terrorism legislation as a stopgap, and why I have argued for some time that detention in Belmarsh should be replaced by a measure such as control orders to cover some people suspected of involvement in terrorism. So I support, in general, the Government's proposals to introduce control orders that might, for example, restrict suspects' freedom of association, use of communications or access to particular venues or neighbourhoods. However, I cannot and will not support any law that would allow a British citizen to be imprisoned without trial on the say-so of the Home Secretary. There is nothing personal about that: the present Home Secretary is a decent man. But no Home Secretary should have the power to deprive a fellow citizen of his or her liberty without having to lay convincing evidence before a court, and letting the court decide.
	The Home Secretary has said that he is responsible for the safety of the country, and that that is why it is constitutionally right for him to initiate the control order process. I have no problem with that, but the power that he seeks from us today is not just to initiate control orders but to implement them. That is why I cannot support what he is proposing. There is a greater constitutional principle at stake here than the duties of the Home Secretary: the fundamental constitutional principle that Ministers cannot lock up fellow citizens. Only courts can do that.
	It has been suggested that having to bring each case to court would put innocent lives at risk by preventing the Home Secretary from acting promptly if he believed that there was an immediate threat. That is simply not true. Suspects can be arrested immediately, kept for 14 days, and then possibly remanded in custody until evidence is submitted to a court. I use the word court deliberately. That may mean a judge sitting as a court, but the judge and his judgment would be subject to court rules and procedures designed to ensure consideration of the facts as well as the law, and to balance security with justice in what we must all admit are difficult and perplexing circumstances. The right for our case to be heard before a court is the bedrock of our system of justice.
	That brings me to my final point. No mature democracy has ever been overthrown by terrorism. The terrorist bosses know that as well as we do. Their aim is not to overthrow our system of government but to provoke responses from us that damage us in the eyes of the people whom they wish to impress. In the case of this country, one of the things that they want to do is get us to abandon our long-standing and honourable claim to be a society that rejects arbitrary imprisonment and rests instead on the demanding and constraining concepts of natural justice and the rule of law.
	That is why I cannot accept the Home Secretary's proposals on house arrest. They undermine the timeless rights of British citizens, and would undermine our standing in the world.

Richard Shepherd: We have just heard a very important speech. Following on from my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), I place it with the speech by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), who is to retire at the next election. That was a moving speech because it recounted the very purpose why we are here and the traditions with which the Labour party was most closely associated: the beliefs, rights and freedoms of the individual. Collectively, this Parliament should be asserting what is our constitutional and legal history.
	The interesting thing about the Bill is that it draws us together on two themes: our own rightsthe tradition from Magna Carta, through habeas corpus to the age of universal democracy in this countryand the protection of our rights through the quasi-separation of powers between the judiciary, the Executive and Parliament itself. In fact, the Government have stumbled not because of the traditions of this country but because of their own flagship legislation, the Human Rights Act 1998. My purpose, in the few minutes that I have, is to try to draw to the attention of the House why I think all this will founder yet again on the basis of that Act.
	The Bill gives the Secretary of State powers to place an individual under house arrest or place such restrictions on their movements as amount to a deprivation of their liberty. The Bill refers to those powers as derogating control orders. They are dealt with in clause 1(3)(g) and 1(4) and clause 2(1). In light of the Home Secretary's announcement that there is currently no need to derogate from article 5 because there are no individuals in respect of whom deprivation of liberty could be said to be strictly required, there would seem to be no need for the Government to take in this legislation the power to make derogating control orders depriving individuals of their liberty by, for example, placing them under house arrest.
	Since it is now the Government's position that the intelligence relating to the current detainees cannot justify the deprivation of their liberty, all the Government need to do to meet the concerns expressed by the Law Lords is to provide themselves with the legal basis on which to deal with the current detainees in a way that is proportionate and non-discriminatory. If that can be done, as the Government now say, by measures short of deprivation of liberty, there is no need, in order to deal with the current threat to the nation, to take much wider powers that, by the Government's own admission, are not at present strictly required.
	At the very least, there can be no justification for including such wide and unprecedented powers of Executive detention in legislation that is being rushed through Parliament at a speed and on a guillotine that prevents proper scrutiny, in order to get it on the statute book in time to deal with those detained under provisions that are shortly to expire. Legislation passed at such speed should be confined to that which is essential to deal with the problem about to arise. The problem for the Government is what to do with the detainees if the law under which they are currently detained lapses. The Bill should be confined to that, which means that all the provisions concerning derogating control orders should be taken out of the Bill, if necessary to be returned to when there is more opportunity for careful parliamentary scrutiny.
	In any event, it also appears questionable as a matter of law whether creating a domestic legal framework that provides in advance for derogating control orders can itself be done without derogating from the European convention on human rights at the time of creating the framework itself, which would require the Government to demonstrate the necessity for having such a framework at the level of threat that currently exists.
	The Bill provides for control orders to be made by the Secretary of State that have the effect of depriving individuals of their liberty without any prior judicial involvement and without any intention of bringing them before a court on a criminal charge. The Bill does provide for automatic consideration of such derogating control orders by the High Court within seven days and requires the court to quash the order if not satisfied that the matters relied on by the Secretary of State were capable of constituting reasonable grounds for him to make a control order against that person, or for imposing an obligation amounting to a deprivation of liberty. It also provides, in all other cases, for there to be a hearing by the court. The court must conduct its own hearing and make its own determination of each of the matters determined by the Secretary of State. All that is after the event and not prior to judicial involvement in the decision to deprive someone of liberty.

Douglas Hogg: What is more, the process is imperfect because a detained person does not have access to the documents or the evidence and will not have a chance to defend himself or herself against the accusations.

Richard Shepherd: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend, who anticipates me.
	The degree of judicial involvement provided for in the Bill in relation to derogating control orders is unlikely, in my view, to be compatible with the requirements of the European convention on human rightsin particular, with the requirement in article 5 that any deprivations of liberty must be
	in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law.
	Other than in the exceptional circumstances enumerated in article 5(l)(a) to (f), deprivations of an individual's liberty require prior judicial authorisation if they are to be in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law. Such prior judicial authorisation is regarded by the European Court of Human Rights as an inherent feature of the rule of law, which requires safeguards against arbitrary detention. The House is familiar with all that, because it has watched over these practices through the centuries.
	The Home Secretary's reason for refusing to countenance prior judicial authorisation of the deprivation of liberty is that that would be to abdicate to the judiciary the Executive's responsibility for national security, for which it is rightly accountable to Parliament. With due respect to the Home Secretary, that is an eccentric interpretation of the constitutional doctrine of the separation of powers. It is a long-established principle of the British constitution that, outside the field of immigration, the Executive have no power to detain individuals without prior judicial authorisation, or in circumstances where it is intended to bring the individual before a court as soon as possible for further detention to be authorised.
	Both Parliament and the Executive have long accepted and respected the judiciary's responsibility for the liberty of the individual. To invoke national security to deny that role is to subvert our traditional constitutional division of powers. The Home Secretary's argument would, absurdly, apply equally to criminal justice. The Home Secretary is undoubtedly responsible to the public for protecting them against crime, but nobody would suggest that it is an abdication of that role for the Executive to accept that the courts are the appropriate constitutional branch to decide whether particular individuals should be deprived of their liberty. I hope that we will not hear any more such nonsense from the Home Secretary.
	Even if there were room for argument about the proper separation of powers in the British constitution, it is unlikelythis is where the arguments will founderthat the European Court of Human Rights would regard the exclusion of prior judicial involvement in deprivations of liberty as compatible with the convention.
	I shall leave the legal points there, but I reaffirm that this House is also a custodian of our freedoms. Everyone who votes tonight should be mindful of breaking a great trust and mindful of the fact that the Governmentthe Executive and a Secretary of Statewill effectively be able to detain us. It goes against the spirit of this country, which has a powerful belief in liberty and freedom. The Government and this Home Secretary are striking against it.

Graham Allen: This debate is about the continuing and one-sided battle between Executive power and democracy, rather than about legalisms. The power of the Government has massively increased in recent decades and parliamentary power has diminished almost to the point of being extinguished. Judicial power has often made itself distant and irrelevant, so our system of checks and balances, such as it was, has grown weaker and weaker. That is why we have come to this pass today.
	The Government are right to take measures to safeguard us from international terrorism, but Parliament is also right to insist on measures to preserve, especially in difficult times as well as easy times, the balance between security and liberty. If there is the will, in the House and in the Government, to achieve that balance, then further work is necessary on the Bill.
	Like many colleagues on all sides of the House, I start from the premise that no Executive authority or Government Ministereven one whom I know and trustshould ever be given the ability to commit an individual to indefinite detention. The right to a fair trial and proper judicial process is a sacred part of our democracy. In a democracy, that right must only ever be suspended with the consent of the judicial process.
	There are a number of ways forward on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) spoke about the Director of Public Prosecutions and about the need to make sure that evidence is presented in a way that allows a case to go forward. He also said that, if there were no case to answer, there must be a fall-back position, and I hope that the Government will explore that detail.
	In addition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and many other hon. Members made the point that, at present, the police have the ability to detain an arrested terrorist suspect for 14 days. If the Home Secretary wants that person to be detained longer because he has evidence that leads him to believe that that person is highly dangerous, he can within that period apply to a judge in the Appeal Court or the High Court, or whatever level is appropriate, for a time-limited detention order. We need to look at that aspect in more detail as we scrutinise this Bill. Once the order has expired, the Home Secretary must go back to the judge to seek a renewal.
	Therefore, to make this bit of the Bill work, the Government have only to move from judicial review to judicial application. The difference is a fine one, but it is the difference between democracy and arbitrary power. It is a difference that Members of Parliament must be the first to recognise and advocate. If we do not do that, why on earth do we need a Parliament at all? It is our duty, and nothing less than our personal responsibility, to make sure that we ask these questions.
	As long as the Government incubus controls Parliament, they can force such matters through. No doubt that will happen again today, but some of us in the House of Commons will insist on making our death-rattle heard.

Douglas Hogg: The hon. Gentleman is making a very serious point, but does he agree that another matter needs to be taken into account? That is the question of whether an individual should be subject to what amount to penal sanctions even though he or she has not been convicted of any offence. Will he consider that as well?

Graham Allen: We all face a terrible dilemma in that respect, and none more so than the Home Secretary. Many hon. Members might indulge in flights of rhetoric that would disappear the first time a serious terrorist incident occurred. I certainly would not want to be one of them. The threat is immense: we can barely comprehend its nature, but it is very different from any threat that we have faced in the past. These are extraordinary times, and they require extraordinary measures. My point is that democracy must also respond in an extraordinary way.

David Davis: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about concerns disappearing as soon as a terrorist event occurs, but does he accept that the main miscarriages of justice over the last couple of decades have happened in precisely the circumstances he describesthat is, after a terrorist event?

Graham Allen: Indeed, and the pressure on the Government would be even greater if this House did not draw a line now. Hon. Members must try to imagine what a Government of any political complexion would be forced into if there were to be an atrocity on the scale of 9/11 in the UK. However, that is not to excuse any Member of this House from seeking to help Government find a way to resolve this very difficult and thorny problem. I hope that colleagues, and above all the electorate, will never forgive any hon. Member who makes political capital out of this problem.
	We have witnessed today the extraordinary constitutional innovation of do-it-yourself pre-legislative scrutiny, which I welcome. If the House has any role whatsoever, it is to examine legislation before it is passed by the Houserecently that has been very much in evidence in the area of criminal justice. I worked with the Home Secretary on student fees, and it is in his character to be open to ideas and influences and to seek to create better law. He deserves every credit for that, but would we not all have benefited if pre-legislative scrutiny were more protracted and considered than has been the case with our deliberations on the Floor of the House today?

Tam Dalyell: My hon. Friend referred to the extraordinary times in which we live. In the interests of candour, is not one partial contributory cause the habit of America and Britain of indulging in illegal wars in the middle east?

Graham Allen: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not be drawn into the areas into which he is trying to divert me. None the less, questions about intelligence have some resonance in this area.
	We could learn a lesson from the openness of the Home Secretary. I am delighted that he has met the shadow Home Secretary and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, and I congratulate the Prime Minister and others on their open-mindedness. That is the approach of the Executive and the putative Executive, but Parliament also has a responsibility. It must seize the opportunity to ensure that, in future, matters of this importanceand, indeed, the normal legislation that proceeds through the Housereceive proper and early scrutiny, because that leads to better law that sticks and does the job that we would all wish it to do.

Dominic Grieve: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would use his influence to pass that on to his colleagues on the Front Bench. I was grateful for the opportunity to meet the Home Secretary and I am pleased that dialogue can take place. Nevertheless, it is not helpful when other people's reservations, if they go beyond a certain point, are immediately characterised as mere party political advantage and posturing. There are a wide range of views in the House, all of which are legitimate. I heartily endorse the hon. Gentleman's belief that we need to deal with this issue seriously. We are happy to do so, but at times we have been left with the impression that others are not.

Graham Allen: If the hon. Gentleman waits for me to exert my influence on my Front-Bench team, he may be in for a very long wait, but I commend it for its open-minded approach to the issue and for listening. That may not have been the case previously, and I congratulate the Home Secretary on the way in which he has conducted the informal pre-legislative scrutiny. It is welcome and I look forward to a slightly more formal approach after future Queen's Speeches.
	The power that the Government seek to arrogate is necessarily extraordinary, given the threat that we face. Our democratic response must be equally extraordinary. A one-club policy of containment of international terrorism will not suffice any longer. We need not only the proper involvement of the rule of law, which I hope can be achieved by hon. Members contributing to the progress of the legislation, but also the involvement of the legislature both pre-legislatively and post-legislatively. Given the relatively small number of cases13 people, I understand, have been taken to Belmarsh in a three-year periodit is within the wit even of this demoralised and dragooned place to organise some parliamentary oversight. It is a shame that we have to fawn and beg the Government to do what is the rightful duty of most other democratic legislatures in the world.
	Hoping for favours from a benign Government or personality, or for obstruction from an illegitimate second Chamber, is not, frankly, a substitute for a sustainable strategy to defend our liberties in these difficult times. I hope that people who aspire to lead their parties and our country will not only talk about rights and responsibilities but have the confidence to share them with all our people by putting them down in a written constitution for all to see. What is good enough for the European Union and what Iraqis in their hundreds have been prepared to die for in recent weeks must, surely, find a place in our own country. Today demonstrates again, for those who need it, how flimsy and pathetic are the defences of unentrenched rights in the United Kingdom. A written constitution would define our historic rights and social responsibilities and, incidentally, make clear the emergency powers necessary to defend those liberties from the extraordinary threats that we face today.
	I hope that all parties can see that crisis management of Parliament and the media must give way to a more thoughtful and inclusive strategy. I hope that this is the day that we start to realise that British democracy and politics cannot be defined as what happens between No. 10 and the media, but must involve an independent Parliament, a separate judiciary, a legitimate second Chamber and, above all, citizens who understand their rights and responsibilitiesin other words, an effective, active and healthy democracy, which is what terrorists and fundamentalists fear the most.
	The issue has again highlighted some of the starkest failings of our political system. Just when strong, independent legislative scrutiny of a Government extending their powers at the expense of our liberties is most needed, it is missing. Just when a clear, written constitution should be providing the parameters for resolving the terrible dilemmas between the safeguarding of our rights and our security, it is absent. Just when we need separation of powers so that those who exercise governmental power are not the same people who should be holding them to account, it cannot be found. None of those fundamental flaws in our political system has been addressed by my Government during the past seven years. None has been considered important and may not be considered important today.
	I hope that the lessons of today are not lost when the crisis blows over. We are entering an era when such dilemmas will become more common and acute for all of us. Without checks and balances, what could come next, not from this Government but from a future one under the auspices of other people? What action might be contemplated by a future Government in a British 9/11 scenario? There cannot be more serious problems to be faced by all of us in this Chamber. We need to prepare our democratic structures and democratic response now for such eventualities. We should not make them up as we go along, although I have appreciated the flexibility from Ministers today.

David Winnick: My hon. Friend emphasised that there is an acute terrorist danger and few would disagree. Will he bear it in mind that, during the vulgar outburst from my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), not once did he speak about the terrorist danger facing our country?

Graham Allen: I shall leave it to my hon. Friend to take that up with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch.
	I hope that the few pips that have squeaked today will help those in No. 10 and those who aspire to be there to understand that in Britain we cannot choose between vigorously fighting terrorism or deepening and strengthening our democracy. Both are essential and inseparable partners if we are to prevail in an ever more dangerous world.

Malcolm Bruce: As we have heard in all speeches from both sides of the House, and as I said in my intervention, the Home Secretary is between a rock and a hard place. It seems that the only way in which he can resolve that is to accept the principle of judicial decision. Listening to this debate, knowing that it will be taken to another place, and with the time constraints on the Government, it is difficult to see how we can fail to get from that point to where we want to be. The question is: why are the Government making it so difficult and painful to get to a point that can unite both sides? My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) made a constructive speech and indicated a willingness to try to ensure that the legislation works, but that fundamental principle must be conceded before anything can flow to an all-party agreement.
	I speak as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and of the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee; I am also the rapporteur on political prisoners, about which I might say something more shortly. I am left with the question of why the United Kingdom, alone among the 46 members of the Council of Europe, seeks a derogation from article 5 of the European convention on human rights and wants the right to lock up people indefinitely without trial. Why do not other Governments wish to do that, and especially the Spanish Government, given the atrocities that their country has suffered? My first question is: why do we alone feel the need to do that?
	In fact, the Home Secretary has suggested that he does not want to do that. He has told us that he is trying to divide his Bill into two sections: derogation and non-derogation. To derogate or not to derogate, that is the question. But he also acknowledged that even non-derogation powers could be challenged, and they probably will be. They certainly will be if they are combined cumulatively under the European convention on human rights. In reality, there are not two categories but one. That said, one category will definitely be challenged, and one will probably be challenged.
	It is also important that we do not become too narrowly concerned about the Human Rights Act 1998. It served British citizens well because it dealt with the remoteness of the European convention on human rights and the Strasbourg Court by bringing them closer to us and by making them accessible through our own judicial process. Those who did not like the Law Lords' decisionthat might include the Governmentknow perfectly well that it was based on their interpretation of what the Strasbourg Court would have decided, had the matter gone before it. That was what they were obliged to do.

Richard Shepherd: The hon. Gentleman is making an extraordinarily good case. On the comparators, we are a common-law country; that is what our law is founded on. The observation that so many make is, How is it that the other common-law societies that we respectthe United States, Canada, Australiahave not found it necessary to take these extraordinary measures?

Malcolm Bruce: I am very happy to accept that intervention because, in a sense, it complements the point I am making. We were, after all, co-authors and founder-signatories of the European convention on human rights, and we put some of our principles at the heart of it. I do not want to go down this road, but it worries me that people say, Let's repeal the Human Rights Act. They fail to recognise that that would not change anything other than the practice of accessibility; it would not change the law itself. However, that is by the bye.
	As I said, I am the rapporteur on political prisoners in Europe, and there is a point at issue that we should recognise. We are rightly concerned about what we are doing for British citizens and residents, and obviously that is what this Parliament is fundamentally about. However, we are also part of an international community and we should consider how this Bill looks from outside. In keeping with the intervention of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), how does it look when a country such as the UK feels the need to take these powers when other countries do not? What kind of example does that set?
	I have twice had to visit AzerbaijanI will visit it again next monthto try to secure the release of political prisoners whose imprisonment has been identified by the Council of Europe as incompatible with its obligations. I have also reported on the developing situation of political prisoners in Russia, and I refer to the case of Svetlana Bakhmina to highlight the abuse of power. She is a lawyer and Russian citizen who left this country after a meeting in London and was arrested within 24 hours of returning to Moscow. She was taken into custody, while her young children were left abandoned, and she was subjected to physical force that put her in hospital. Two months later, she is still being detained by the security forces without any charge or evidence being brought. We must remonstrate with the Russians and point out that that is not the way for countries that are signatories to the European convention on human rights to behave. How will it look if we pass this Bill and lock up people without providing the proper process of judicial balance and evidence and the right to have their case tested? I do not believe that we will have the authority or credibility to argue that case. Such behaviour will seriously undermine what we stand for.
	When the Home Secretary indicated that he had no intention of seeking an extension of the existing powers, I wondered whether that was because he knows that they will be challenged. That the derogation is an absolute right is not the case; it is subject to certain tests and can be challenged. However, if the Home Secretary is saying that he has no intention of seeking an extension, although the Conservatives suggest that he should, he is putting himself in a position where the time scale within which we have to operate will be extremely short.
	I hope that Ministers will take note of the tone of the debate. I notice that only one Member on the Government Benches has so far indicated the intention of voting for the Bill. Of course, people come to these debates to express their views, but there seems to be a paucity of Labour Back Benchers queuing up to give the Government their support.
	None of us underestimates the need to address international terrorism. I do not think that we want to challenge the integrity either of Ministers or of the security serviceswho have access to information that they cannot shareon the need to take such action. I hope, however, that they will accept that this is a mature Parliament and that even if the information cannot be shared with us, we must be satisfied that the process is fair and objective. People have the right to hear the charge against them and to defend themselves. The decision must be taken by an independent, impartial court. I want to make a provocative point, but it is real. If somebody is put into detention without trial by a Minister, we cannot avoid that person being described as a political prisoner.

Dominic Grieve: I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman on the point about the Home Secretary not exercising the powers, but may I press him a little further? I suggest that it must be accepted that the nature of the process we shall set up, even if it is carried out by a judge, will have inherent capacity for injustice. That will not be the fault of the judge; it will be because he cannot hear the other side of the case without the necessary information. I urge the hon. Gentleman and everyone else in the House to focus on that issue. We cannot let that point go by the board simply by saying that we shall hand the taking of the decision to the judge.

Malcolm Bruce: I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I return to the European conventionthe right to trial requires that information be put into the court, so we shall have a problem if we think that we can have a process where that is not the case. We shall be on the wrong side of the convention in spirit and, probably, in letter.
	I do not for a minute want to give people who are detained on suspicion of being terrorists the comfort of claiming that they are political prisoners. I want us to be able to say that they have been put through a process and determined by an independent judicial system to be subject to the orders on the basis of evidence, with an agreed test of judgment. In that situation, they would not have the right to describe themselves as political prisoners and, more to the point in terms of the integrity of the British state, we would not be subjected to the accusation that we were creating a body of political prisoners. I do not want to be told that I have to investigate the United Kingdom's political prisoners. It is difficult enough doing that in Azerbaijan and Russia, without having to do it at home. I am not being facetious. Questions will be asked if we alone, among the 46 members of the Council of Europe, go down that path and the decision is taken by a Minister subject only to judicial review. We could be accused of creating political prisoners.
	It is in everybody's interest to ensure that the process is robust and strong and protects the integrity of the state, the security of the system and the principles of British justice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said in his potent intervention, it is amazing that the Home Secretary actually wants the powers on those terms. If judges review cases properly, there will be the maximum capacity for embarrassment to him. Of course, if there are no means for the proper testing of evidence there may be questions as to how the process could apply.
	We need a robust system on which we can agree, which gives us security and control and ensures that we can show that people have been given a proper test and have received proper judgment. That will serve the interests of democracy, about which the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) was rightly concerned, and of justice and the security of the state.
	These are difficult issues and the debate demonstrates that we all recognise that, but I urge the Government to acknowledge that in this context, when we have only a short time, the sooner they concede the principle that judges make the decision and the Government make the case, the sooner we can go on to have a real debate about how to test that case, how to put it through the system and ensure that there is genuine support so that we can defeat terrorism and maintain the integrity of British justice. That is surely what we are all trying to achieve.

Barbara Follett: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). I, too, feel that the example that we set is very important and I intend to cover that in my speech.
	Like most other Members who have spoken today, I recognise that we have a problem. I recognise, too, like my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), that very real attempts have been made by the Home Secretary to solve that problem. I salute him for the work that he has been doing and I value it. I also recognise that, in today's world, control orders are sadly necessary, but I do not see why those control orders have to be initiated and implemented by a single politician. Nor do I see why that politician needs to have only reasonable grounds for suspecting that the individual concerned is, or has been, involved in terrorism-related activity. That seriously worries me.
	Those reasonable grounds could be based on intelligence evidence. It is the nature of intelligence gathering that it is unreliable. It is difficult. We have no guarantee that that intelligence will be correct. I know, because I have known the Home Secretary for many years and worked with him for many years, that he is an honourable and fair man. He is acting from the very best of motives and in the public interest, but, with the deepest respect, I think that the end does not justify these means. In fact, I fear that if we use undemocratic means such as these, we may unintentionally will new and awful ends. That is why I will not support the Bill tonight and why I ask my right hon. Friend to think again.
	There are better ways of doing thisquite a few have been mentioned in the Chamber tonight. I will not go over them because other hon. Members want to speak, but we should involve a judge from the outset, use the Crown Prosecution Service procedure and have a look at how the Canadians use intercept evidence in court. In other words, look at it again and think again about the kind of example that this sets, as the hon. Member for Gordon said. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) was right when he said that people can be detained without trial for as long as four years on the continent, but does that mean that we should emulate them? Does that mean that that is something that we should even consider?
	I lived for many years in South Africa, during the dark days of apartheid. During that time, Britain's legal system was held up as a beacon of light and hope, as the prison bars of the apartheid state closed around us. In 1961, the South African Government introduced the General Law Amendment Act, which allowed people to be detained for 12 days without trial. By 1963, that had been extended to 90 days. By 1965, it was 180 days. Two years later, it became indefinite. At the same time, the apartheid regime was issuing control orders that restricted the right of some citizens to congregate, to work and, in some cases, to leave the confines of their own homes. Those orders had a devastating effect on the life of the suspect and his or her family. I should knowmy first husband was served with one of them in 1971. He lived under it for five years, and it was only thanks to the generosity of the university at which he taught that he did not starve. He could not work, leave his home or travel to Cape Town to see his mother, and he barely saw his children.
	I know that this is Britain and not South Africa or Burma, but we must not underestimate the importance of what we are doing today and the message that it sends to countries where we are talking about good governance. The example that we set will stay with us for many years. Removing the hope that we give, as we could tonight, might have a deleterious effect.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I have been listening to my hon. Friend with considerable admiration and respect. Will she apply her deep knowledge of the matters about which she speaks to clause 1, and especially the provisions in paragraphs (a) to (o) of subsection (3), which set out in detail the restrictions that could be put on people through a non-derogation order? Does she agree that they bear an extraordinary and chilling resemblance to the pass laws in South Africa?

Barbara Follett: I wish that I did not have to agree with my hon. and learned Friend, but the provisions do bear an extraordinary resemblance to those laws. We must beware of going down that road. Again, I say that this country is not South Africa, but we have an example to set.
	My first husband was put under house arrest because the apartheid state believed that he was a threat to its security. He probably was; he was campaigning to give black people the right to vote and join trade unions. Given the structure of the South African state, he probably was threatening it because it believed that only whites could vote and join trade unions. House arrest hampered him, but did not stop him, which was probably why, just before his five-year order was due to expire, he was shot dead in front of our two young daughters in their bedroom. I tried to comfort them in the days that followed by telling them that we were going to go to Britain, where people were not detained without trial or put under house arrest. When one tries to tell a 13-year-old and a nine-year-old that not all parts of the world are as bad as others, one looks for examples, and we in Britain were that example. I am glad that I am here today so that my now 40-year-old and 36-year-old daughters can hear that we are still fighting to uphold that.
	I understand that control orders are necessary in some circumstances, which is why, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), I supported the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. However, that Act was a stop-gap measure. It is due to be reviewed in five years and is subject to continual review. The Bill, however, is not a stop-gap measure. It will embed an undemocratic principle in our law. It will remove rights that are guaranteed under the Magna Carta, which says that no free manI add the word woman to thatshall be arrested or detained except by the lawful judgment of his or her peers. If that was good enough for 1215, surely it is good enough for 2005.
	I ask the Home Secretary to think again, please. He should get a judge to implement the orders and consider how to use intelligence evidence in court. He should consider putting a time period on the Bill and review it in five years, rather than committing us to it for ever. Above all, he should take time and care. These principles are the very basis of our democracy and our party. If we destroy them, it destroys us.

Douglas Hogg: The House has listened with respect and great interest to the speech made by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). She brings to the debate a knowledge of the affairs of South Africa while she was living there, and I have no doubt that that has influenced her judgment and what she said. Incidentally, although I shall return to this point later, I suspect that such knowledge influenced the view of Lord Hoffmann when he made his important speech in the Belmarsh judgment, which I commend to the House.
	In one sense, this is an extraordinary debate. To start off with, the House proposes to give Ministers the power of administrative detention, which we have condemned in every other country where it is exercised: for example, Zimbabwe, Burma and Israel. We are proposing to abandon principles that have governed our constitution and legal practices at least since the days of the Stuart kings. We propose to do so in a debate that will last two days. Incidentally, there is one other curious aspectwe are addressing this matter in this way because of the judicial interpretation of the European convention on human rights, which was incorporated into British law to protect human rights in this country. Bizarrely, it is having a contrary effect.
	Another extraordinary thing about this debate is the high degree of agreement between the Back Benches on both sides of the House. May I say to the Government that when there is such unity it behoves them to listen carefully to what has been said, notwithstanding their majority?
	I am conscious that other Members want to speak. Furthermore, many of the points have been made with great eloquence. I shall therefore focus briefly on four issues: first, the principle of what is involved; secondly, whether there is a need; thirdly, the purported safeguards; and lastly, process.
	First, on principle, at the most extreme we are talking about administrative detentiona form of indefinite imprisonment. In relation to the less extreme form of judicial control orders, we are talking about something less. None the less, as the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) said, it is a process that will destroy people's livelihoods because they will be denied the ability to work, to associate and to have access to their friends. All of that is at the say-so of a Minister. I find that wholly offensive. Ministers should not have those powers. On that point, I am wholly immovable.
	Another question of principle arises as to whether such sanctions should be imposed otherwise than after a conviction for a substantive offence. My strong presumption is that such things should be done only after a conviction for a substantive offence. Yes, I will listen to the arguments, and it is possible that I could be moved on that point, but only were there to be a full judicial process. I shall return shortly to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve).
	The truth is that the powers that we are conferring on the Government are sought in a democratic state only in the direst and darkest days of war. That is not today, whatever other perils we face. Otherwise, they are the kind of powers that are usually sought by dictators to practise tyranny.
	Secondly, on the question of need, I do not come blind to this debate. I have practised at the Barand still do sofor nearly 40 years, now almost exclusively at the criminal Bar. I also have some relevant experience in government. For two years, I was an Under-Secretary at the Home Office, with responsibility for the terrorism legislation then carried through, and I necessarily had some dealings with the security services. For five years, I was a Foreign Office Minister with a close relationship with the intelligence services and GCHQ, and was very familiar with the kind of considerations that underpin the anxieties now being expressed by the Government. I very much doubt whether there is a justification for what the Government are asking us to do.
	To start withthis is a bizarre factwe are considering the Bill not because the security services have told us that there is a security need, but because the House of Lords, in the Belmarsh judgment, told us that we could not make a distinction between citizens and non-citizens, and that is a very different matter.

Tam Dalyell: On the security services, how is it possible to establish the universal agreement of all security services that such and such should be true?

Douglas Hogg: I do not believe that it is possible. The Father of the House makes a serious point. What is more, the security services seldom express themselves in really robust ways. We have only to consider the Butler committee reportI shall not go into great detailto find that when the security services assessed the existence or otherwise of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they qualified that assessment to a high degree, so I think that the Father of the House is right.
	I return to the question of need. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) has advanced other approachesfor example, the creation of alternative offences, whether it is possible to admit classes of evidence not presently admitted and to safeguard that evidence, and whether perhaps there should be some form of special court. I would contemplate, though I find it difficult to believe that I would accept, that maybe some limited form of control order made by a judge, falling short of house arrest, might be acceptable. I shrink from that but I am prepared to consider it.
	There are these alternatives, but there is another alternative that we should not overlook, and that is surveillance. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and I spent a long time in the Foreign Office, and we know quite a lot about surveillance methods. I had responsibilitythe House will forgive me if I do not go into too much detailfor ensuring that individual citizens were safe. We relied on surveillance to achieve that. Surveillance can be extremely effective and I doubt whether there is a need for the draconian measures that are proposed.

David Davis: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm what I believe is his experience and mine, that when major surveillance is mounted on targets, one of the side effects is that it generates vast quantities of evidence that can be used in court?

Douglas Hogg: Yes. It is an important point. If surveillance is maintained, we see the identity of those associated with the suspected person and we learn a great deal about what they are saying and about their financial records, for example. In some cases, it leads to admissible evidence and a prosecution.
	I move on to my two final points. The Home Secretary referred to the safeguards in the Bill. Like the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews), I do not believe that they are in any way adequate. I draw very much on what the hon. and learned Gentleman said. He made a distinction between the safeguards regarding non-derogating powers and those regarding derogating powers. On the non-derogating powers, the hon. and learned Gentleman was entirely right when he said that this is but judicial reviewnot irrelevant, but it does not go to the question of fact. It merely seeks to determine whether the Home Secretary has acted reasonably within the law. That is very different from examining the known facts.
	I concede at once that in respect of the derogating powers the court has a greater role to play. It examines the merits, but it is a partial examination because, of course, the evidence is not disclosed to the detained person. The detained person does not have an opportunity to read the documents and may not know the nature and identity of the accuser. They are not necessarily represented by a person of their own choice. The special advocate cannot take from the detained person what we lawyers call instructions. The process is very imperfectthe Father of the House reminded us of the case of Judith Hart, whom the security services falsely identified. I commend to the House a letter in The Daily Telegraph yesterday from one Edward Greene, who tells readers how his father was interned under the then internment procedures because of a false allegation that was deliberately made to MI5, which had paid a man to produce the names of suspects. That sort of thing is bound to happen.
	To take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, the problem is not only the nature of the process, but the fact that the person facing the allegation does not know the allegation and cannot test it. That is true whether the control order is initiated by a Minister or by a judge, so the objection is not to this form of control order, but to control orders themselves.
	Drawing on my personal experience as well as my knowledge of the law as a member of the Bar, let us not forget that many miscarriages of justice have occurred within the context of a judicial process. If one does not have a judicial process, one can be certain that yet more miscarriages will occur, which is the inevitable consequence of the legislation that the House is being asked to approve.
	My final point is a word on the process by which the Bill is being hurried through, which is a scandal. The Bill was published for the first time yesterday and today is its Second Reading. Inevitably, the public have not had the opportunity to communicate to us, their representatives, what they think about it, which surely undermines the constitutional practices that we value. The Bill will leave this House on Monday under the tightest of guillotines and after the barest of scrutiny, which is an outrageous way to treat a matter of this importance.
	The Home Secretary has said that the Bill is necessary. When we asked him why it is necessary, he asked, What about the detainees in Belmarsh? The detainees in Belmarsh can be released tomorrow, because they present no danger to the state. Why do they present no danger to the state? Because we know and they know that they will be under the very closest supervision and surveillance. It is fanciful to suggest that they would do anything to make contact with terrorist organisations in those circumstances, which, if they are guilty, would provide admissible evidence against them and expose their terrorist network. They will not do such things, and if they walked the streets tomorrow, they would do no harm to this state. I say this with regret, but this Bill has a great deal more to do with general elections than it has to do with the security of the state.
	I remind the House of the words of Lord Hoffmann, whose background is South African. Perhaps he overstated the case, but this is the conclusion to his judgment on Belmarsh:
	The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these. That is the true measure of what terrorism may achieve. It is for Parliament to decide whether to give the terrorists such a victory.
	We face that question tonight, and I urge the House to reject the Bill.

Andrew Dismore: Returning to the remarks of the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), I am here to support the Bill, although I cannot say that I welcome it. None of us welcomes the Bill, because of the circumstances in which it has arisen, but I accept the necessity of its introduction.
	We need to recognise the Law Lords' decision, recognise its basis and act on it. Those who advocate kicking the Bill into touch and extending the part 4 powers while we come up with something else to replace them are effectively condemning those people who are currently detained in Belmarsh to many more months of detention while the House grinds on and makes its mind up. I do not want those people, who have been found to be unlawfully detained, to be detained any longer than is absolutely necessary.
	I do not agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) that these people do not necessarily pose a threat to our society. We must recognise the nature of the threat that we face, which is different from the terrorism that we have experienced in this country in the past. The Home Secretary ably set out the different nature of the terrorism we now face; the terrorism of mass murder that is aimed not against specific high-profile targets but at soft targets and the general public wherever they can be murdered in their thousands.
	Let us be realistic. Those who advocate the criminal law must recognise that it provides no deterrent to suicide terrorism. If people are prepared to die in the commission of those offences, the criminal law will hold no fears or terror for them. The fear of a lengthy jail sentence to them is an irrelevance. We must recognise the sort of people we are dealing with. It is difficult discussing those in Belmarsh because they have not been identified, but from the information that is publicly available, we can see that they are very dangerous indeed.
	The one who has been named, Abu Qatadaeven from the information that is in the public domaincan be seen to be an extremely dangerous individual and a close associate of al-Qaeda. He is believed to be al-Qaeda's leading operative in Europe, someone in whom security services throughout Europe are interested. To suggest that simple surveillance is the answer to such people is clearly wrong. Abu Qatada was under surveillance before the power to detain came into effect. The night beforeone does not know whether he had a tip-offhe gave the security services the slip and went on the run. It took nine months to track him down again. That is the sort of person we are dealing with, and simple surveillance would not be the answer.
	I believe that we are dealing with a relatively small number of people. There are less than a dozen in Belmarsh, and the security services have an interest in perhaps a similar number of UK nationals. We are not looking at a huge round-up of UK or foreign nationals, or at the sort of round-up that happened during the second world war. We are not looking at a Casablanca-style round-up of the usual suspects. We are looking at a relatively small number of people who are perceived to be a threat to our society.

Elfyn Llwyd: The hon. Gentleman understates, or mistakes, his case. The Home Secretary said that there were 1,000 people in the UK who were connected in some way with al-Qaeda. The hon. Gentleman refers to a dozen: a slight difference.

Andrew Dismore: There may be people who are supporters or advocates of al-Qaeda, but that does not necessarily mean that they are directly associated with or involved in terrorism such that they would fall within the powers in the Bill. From my discussions with people in Scotland Yard and elsewhere, I believe that that is the sort of number they are looking at.
	The preference is to try to put people on trial in court. There have been 701 arrests, 119 people have been charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 and 135 have been charged under the general criminal law with murder, grievous bodily harm and firearms, explosives and other offences. There are trials under way, but one of the problems is the reporting restrictions, which mean that nobody really knows what is going on.
	One trial has been going on for six months and is expected to last for some time yet, but most people in the House today would not even know of its existence. I understand that another trial is to start on Monday, and again we will hear little about it; further trials are due to take place throughout the year. I think that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner was right to criticise the extent of the reporting restrictions imposed by the courts and the Attorney-General on some of these trials. Yes, of course we have to ensure that those involved have a fair trial, but some of the blanket restrictions that have been imposed are counter-productive. We need to be able to explain to the public what is going on to remind people of the particular problems that we are trying to deal with. If, for example, the Muslim community were aware that people are not simply being locked away and forgotten about, but are being put on trial within the correct process, they would be reassured that people do have the benefit of due process through the courts.

Gwyneth Dunwoody: I have no legal training of any kind, but is my hon. Friend not undermining his own case? He says that these actions are taking place, so any change in the law is not necessary. We cannot have it both ways. Is he really saying that we should hand to terrorists the one absolute victory of knowing that they have destroyed the most important thing, which is the freedom that they so bitterly resent?

Andrew Dismore: No, I am not saying that. I am illustrating the fact that the system has gone out of its way to put as many people as possible on trial, with correct charges under the criminal law, but inevitably there will be some people against whom there is a strong case but where the evidence is not admissible in court, or can be put into court only in circumstances that would severely compromise its source, so they simply cannot be put on trial.
	For example, I agree with the Opposition that we need a new offence of acts preparatory to terrorist activities. That is essential, because at present the prosecution authorities face a real problem in trying to bring some of those activities within a conspiracy charge. Shoehorning into conspiracy charges some of the activities that we are talking about gives rise to the defence that the agreement to commit the criminal act has not been sufficiently formalised. Not having the kind of law that we need opens up a line of defence for potentially quite serious acts. If we were to amend the criminal law, that would give greater opportunity to bring more proceedings.
	I also do not agree on the question of intercepts. I fully understand what the Home Secretary has said about that, and he makes a powerful case, but to say that intercepts would be of no use whatever in any case, or would compromise the methodology in every case, is wrong. It would be appropriate to allow intercept evidence to be used, but only if it can be used safely. It is not the panacea that many people think it is. It cannot be used in every case, and there is the problem of interpreting the intercept evidence to the juryfor example, proving the contextand what was actually said usually means something quite different. But intercept evidence that is in the public domain in relation to the cases arising from the kidnapping of tourists in Yemen, which has been printed in the newspapers, would have been quite powerful in dealing with one or two of the individuals involved.
	I was impressed by what my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) said about whether the judges or the Home Secretary should make the decision. I would question whether the judges would feel comfortable about making those decisions in the first place. Their role has always, rightly, been to consider the interests of the individual. It is for the Home Secretary to consider the interests of us all collectively. The risk of this approach would in many ways be letting the Home Secretary off the hook. The blame would be passed to somebody else if a particular control order was not imposed by a judge, but the person concerned went on to commit serious terrorist acts. The judges are good at judicial review of administrative decisions; I do not believe that they are very good at making them.
	There are risks of miscarriages of justice. Whether there is a miscarriage of justice or a miscarriage of administrative decision may be a semantic argument, but the consequences in these circumstances of a miscarriage are far less than the prospect of someone, as we saw in the Guildford case, being imprisoned for 10 or 15 years. The risk of wearing a tag for months or years is far less.
	To move on to some of the practicalities of control orders, of course they will not be as effective as detention has been in dealing with some of those individuals. There is the risk of absconding, as I mentioned in the case of Abu Qatada. There is the risk of breach of the orders and trying to enforce the prosecution that would follow from that, to which I will return. There is also the risk of what might be called mission creep, and wider use of the control orders than has been seen in the use of the powers to detain. The powers of detention are the nuclear option of dealing with terrorism. They are so severe and draconian that they have been used sparingly. However, lesser powers carry the risk of being used more frequently. I should like assurances about that.
	There is a major question about resources for operating the new system, which will be harder for the police to manage. I question whether conventional surveillance is a practical proposition, given the number of people involved. The balance between technology and manpower for surveillance will have to be examined. We must also consider the extent to which monitoring is covert or overt, and the extent of tagging. I would be worried if an outsourced company monitored tagging, as has happened with some tagging of ordinary criminals. I should like an assurance that if tagging is to be used, it will not be outsourced. We must guard against that.
	Clearly, all subjects of control orders must have their own case officer. An individual risk assessment will be required and resources will also have to be assessed. I should like an assurance that the Home Office, not council tax payers, will provide the additional resources that the police services involved need to carry out the extra duties. For example, the provisions could place a large burden on the Metropolitan police, who have borne the lion's share of anti-terrorism law so far. That will apply especially in the case of an alleged breach of a control order, which will be resource-intensive to investigate. The criminal standard of proof will apply and there will be a need to ensure that the evidence brought is admissible.
	We must recognise that the sort of people with whom we are dealing have been well advised in the past. They sail close to the wind in some of their activities. It is fair to say that they have run rings around the authorities in many respectsone has only to consider the activities of Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Mohammed to understand how they have brought the authorities into disrepute. There is little doubt that they will push orders to the limit and possibly beyond. I want to be satisfied that the Home Secretary believes the orders to be sufficient to ensure that those involved cannot incite and foment extreme views, as has happened in the past.
	We should consider the impact of control orders on community cohesion. The police could be operating in a difficult environment if the local community is either supportive or afraid of the subjects of the control orders or their followers. That could affect co-operation with the police, especially in relation to the subject of the control order, or more widely, in the fight against terrorism. There could be a much wider impact on local policing and its relations with minority communities.
	The police will also have to protect the subject of the control order from possible victimisation. There have been examples of that in cases involving paedophiles, who have been subject to appalling victimisation. I suspect that those subject to control orders in their homes may face similar problems. There may be an impact on policing levels in local boroughs in London and operational command units elsewhere if the local police service is called on to provide part of the service. I hope that the Home Office will go out of its way to ensure that proper resources are provided for that.

Dominic Grieve: People need not be detained in their homes. The place of detention could be specified as cell 16, wing D, Belmarsh. The point is that they commit an offence if they walk out through the door.

Andrew Dismore: I hope that anyone who walked out through the door when in lawful detention would be deemed to have committed a separate criminal offence. I am dealing with people who are placed under a control order of a rather lesser naturethose who are tagged in their homes, as happens, for example, to sex offenders. They are put under various forms of control and reporting arrangements. We are considering not only the extreme end of the scale, but further down.
	There is a need for a consistent approach to control orders. There is a genuine role for Scotland Yard in co-ordinating the approach nationally.
	I have not gone into detail about some of the more principled issues, which have been explored fully in the debate. When we consider those issues, it is important not to take our eye off the ball of some of the practicalities that are involved in control orders. I have tried to tackle some of them. I should like reassurance from the Home Office on the practical problems that might arise should the Bill make further progress.

Elfyn Llwyd: I speak on behalf of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party.
	Yesterday's exchanges revealed that the Government's perception of the level of terrorist threats is, according to the Home Secretary, relatively unchanged, as it has been over the past two or three months. The impetus for the Bill is, I think, either the Belmarsh judgment or political necessity. I believe that its timing owes as much to the political calendar as to the scathing, and correct, judgment handed down by the Judicial Committee recently.
	I have read Lord Carlile's report and its conclusions. Conclusion 8, on page 37, states:
	Lessons can be learned from the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 detention provisions to enable new laws to be subject to a fair and acceptable system of law . . . including a more developed special advocate procedure and tribunals with a lay element.
	Those of us who do not sign up to the Government's perception of threat from terrorism, or at least the degree of that threat, none the less accept that there is a level of threat, and therefore endorse what Lord Carlile says in his considered and balanced report.  I believe that the Bill conflicts directly with that conclusion. Far from attempting to introduce a fair and acceptable system, the Bill will do the opposite.
	Briefing notes from Libertyproduced, obviously, quite rapidlyrefer, in paragraph 8, to restrictions on liberty being permissible only with a view to some form of criminal disposal at the end of the day. It goes on:
	To be lawful they can only be used to detain or restrict someone with a view to bringing them to trial, to stop them committing an offence or from absconding after committing an offence.
	That refers to article 5 of the European convention on human rights.
	Once detained they must be brought to trial within a reasonable time or released.
	That is in article 5(3) of the convention.
	Restrictions such as tagging and curfew are established practices in criminal law. They are imposed as bail conditions by police or courts to ensure that, for example, a defendant attends court.
	Obviously what is meant is that such restrictions are part of a larger judicial process, and are not an end in themselves.
	The Bill gives the Executive, through the Home Secretary, powers that have always resided with the judiciary, and with good cause. The whole issue of the constitution and the separation of powers is involved in this debate. Everyone accepts that there is a need for the separation of powers. A few weeks ago, in a debate in this place, many Labour Members argued that that was a sacrosanct notion, to be applied even to prevent Members from sitting in a judicial capacity. It was, I suppose, a good argument, but none of those siren voices are here today. The new Labour ranks are pretty thin on the ground. The loyalists who argued that case a fortnight ago have gone to earth.
	Today, though, we are dealing with a far more serious mattera far-reaching matter. The Bill will enable the Home Secretary to impose sweeping and far-reaching infringements of liberty on the basis of mere suspicionalbeit reasonablethat an individual is or has been involved in terrorism or terrorism-related activity. What evidence will the Home Secretary have to present to prove that suspicion? It will be evidence produced by the intelligence services.
	One of the salutary lessons of the Iraq war is that intelligence briefing alone, and its subsequent interpretation by politicians, often lead us to very wrong conclusions. Mere suspicion has never had any standing in any legal proceedings hitherto. The interpretation of the word reasonable will be subjective, and will hardly constitute a safeguard in the circumstances.
	Clause 2 allows the Home Secretary to derogate from article 5 of the human rights convention if he is satisfied, merely
	on the balance of probabilities,
	that a person has been involved in such activity. In other words, the civil burden yet again makes it easier for the Executive to ride roughshod over the individual. If it were ever justified to deprive an individual of his or her liberty in that way, the standard of proof should be far higher. In this instance, the Executive are exercising powers hitherto exclusive to the judiciary, who have always in criminal cases been subject to the higher and safer standard of beyond reasonable doubt. That is a major concern.
	Clause 8 deals with appeals relating to derogating control orders. Subsection (1) refers to where there has been a modification of an order
	without the consent of the controlled person.
	Perhaps in due course the Minister can tell the House where she sees actual consent being given by the controlled person. In what circumstances will that happen? I also ask for confirmation that, in the appeal process, the person will be entitled to legal representation of his or her choice and that legal aid should be available.
	Clause 9, which relates to appeals in respect of control order decisions, states that no appeal shall lie against the decision of the court
	except on a question of law.
	That again is problematic, because, under paragraph 4 of the schedule, the Executive can make up their own rules of court and can
	make provision about the mode and burden of proof in control order proceedings and about evidence in such proceedings
	and
	enable or require such proceedings to be determined without a hearing.

Alistair Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that in Scotland, the subject of rules of court is properly the domain of the Scottish Parliament and the Lord President, who is normally the senior judge responsible for their construction. Does he share my concern that there has been no opportunity for the Scottish Parliament to express a view on that matter and that, at the very best, the Government are blundering into a constitutional grey area?

Elfyn Llwyd: I most definitely share the hon. Gentleman's concern. Rules of court have been formulated over the years with the assistance of the Lord Chief Justice and other members of the judiciary. They have developed over the years. These may blow up in everyone's face. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the constitutional question as well.
	The court can decide an issue without a hearing. The evidence cannot be tested at all and only one avenue of appeal is openthat is, on a question of law.
	An appeal on a question of law is normally about whether a reasonable authority would have come to the conclusion on the evidence before itthe Wednesbury principles. How can a proposed appellant mount an appeal when there has been no hearing of the evidence and no chance to test the evidence? Indeed under this Bill the Executive would be entitled to withhold all the evidence from the controlled person or the appellant. Therefore, that avenue of appeal is an utter sham and in practice means nothing. It does not add up to a row of beans.
	I am desperately unhappy that the rules of court may make provision allowing control order proceedings or relevant appeal proceedings to take place without the full particulars of the reasons being given, and allowing proceedings to be conducted in the absence of the person being controlled. Those are anathema to anyone who knows anything about the judicial system under which we live and operate.

Tam Dalyell: To grasshopper back to the position in Scotland, I think that we should take account of clause 12 of the Bill, which states that
	in relation to proceedings relating to a control order in the case of which the controlled person is a person whose principal place of residence is in Scotland,
	the court
	means the Outer House of the Court of Session.
	It is my understanding that the Scottish authorities agreed to this. Whether there was a Sewel motion or not I do not know, but I understand that it was agreed.

Elfyn Llwyd: I am grateful to the Father of the House for enlightening us on that point, which is extremely important in the circumstances.
	In reality, the proposed appellant could not mount an appeal. That right is illusory.
	Paragraph 4(2)(d) of the schedule refers to a provision to enable the relevant court to supply a controlled person with
	a summary of the evidence taken
	in his or her absence.
	Who decides whether that summary is accurate and full? How can we ever know that? That is a crucial point, as it was when taped interview summaries were first brought in through the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. It is vital that full and accurate summaries are produced in these circumstances. Who can test whether the summary is right? I am afraid that the provisions seem designed to introduce courts only of the marsupial varietythe ultimate example of kangaroo justice.
	Tucked away in paragraph 4 of the schedule is the right of the Home Secretary to prohibit disclosure of evidence to the party concerned and his or her representative. There may be circumstances, I suppose, where that could be necessary, but I am worried that it will become a standard and widespread practice. Paragraph 6 gives the Executive the right to prevent a person from being legally represented. Once again, that is contrary to anything that anyone would consider as fair jurisdiction and, indeed, it breaches the equality of arms principle in the convention on human rights. That is most worrying, and no doubt the so-called rules of court will be framed in order to make life very difficult for the individual.
	Reference is also made to special representation in control order proceedings. Paragraph 7 states:
	The relevant law officer may appoint a person to represent the interests of a relevant party to relevant proceedings in any of those proceedings from which that party and his legal representative (if he has one) are excluded.
	What on earth does that mean? A representative is appointed to act on someone's behalf, but that representative has no contact and no dialogue whatever with the controlled person. How can such a lawyer do a reasonable job on behalf of the controlled person? It is an absolute disgrace.
	Following the resignation of Ian Macdonald, QC, and Rick Scannell as special advocates, Lord Carlile, QC, said in paragraph 78, page 30 of his report:
	There must be factual issues, about where the detainee was and when, or about the reasons for association with certain persons, on which direct discussion with the detainee or his private lawyers would assist in the doing of justice. I believe that such contact, on a careful basis, would meet many of the concerns expressed by Mr. McDonald and others.
	That bears heavily on this particular point, but what have the Government done? They have flown completely in the face of that wise counsel. I do not believe that the Government have given any weight whatever to Lord Carlile's advice, even though he is a pre-eminent legal practitioner. That is most unfortunate. He is trusted, after all, with the oversight of terrorism legislation.
	I referred earlier to the Liberty brief, which I cite again:
	In February 2004 six special advocates wrote an open letter to the Home Secretary expressing concerns at plans then circulating.
	The issue of reforming the current Special Immigration Appeals Commission trials was mentioned. The brief continues:
	We are convinced that both basic principles of fair trial in the criminal context and our experience of the system to date make such a course untenable. It would contradict three of the cardinal principles of criminal justice: a public trial by an impartial judge and jury of one's peers, proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and a right to know, comment on and respond to the case made against the accused. The special advocate system is utterly incapable of replacing these essential fundamentals of a fair trial.
	Those essential fundamentals of a fair trial are all missing from this Bill. It is a bad Bill and a dangerous one. It has no place in our democracy or in our constitution. It will make bad law and I am afraid that it may well make matters worse and fuel the flames that it attempts to extinguish.
	I do not know whether the Bill is part of a political game, but I believe that good sense in the other place will dispatch it as it deserves. It is incapable of amendment, and we in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party will vote against it without hesitation.

Robert Marshall-Andrews: As with everything in life, this Bill has both form and substance, and I shall deal first with the form. The Bill is small but deeply imperfectly formed.
	In part, the Bill is incomprehensible. I have been reviewing statutesmany of them criminal statutesfor 35 years, and this Bill is one of the worst, despite its brevity. I spent one hour and 20 minutes attempting to understand clause 4 alone. That clause deals with the duration for which people can be detained under the control orders and is therefore not unimportant, but I completely failed to understand it, even though I was reading my own language. If it had been translated into Arabic, Hindi or Gujarati, the problem would be even worse. We in this Chamber will no doubt argue about the effect that the Bill will have on al-Qaeda, but one thing is certainthey will not understand it.
	So much for the Bill's form; I now move to its substance. If its form is bad, its substance is truly dreadful. It is almost certainly one of the worst pieces of legislation that any Government have attempted to put through this House for 200 years. It offends against the cardinal and root principle of our democracythe separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.
	That principle is not a tributary of democracy, or a bit or part of it. It is what democracy is, and it is fundamental to our system, as it is to all systems of democracy that ultimately derive from revolutions of the people. The constitutional liberties in the US, France and this country are all based on that principle, which was first enunciated by Montesquieu and subsequently taken up by Paine and Jefferson. Their names will resound through the annals of political democracy and liberty when the names of those who are trying to take democracy away from us will be no more than dusty footnotes in the unpleasant history of this era of Parliament.
	The principle of judicial independence is under attack in this country, but it is interesting to note that there is an attempt to introduce it into the Russian constitution. I was recently in Russia to give a lecture on the principle and I have given four such lectures in the past year. The Russians approach the notion of judicial independence much as they would approach a yeti or an abominable snowmanthey understand that some people have seen such a thing, but they do not really believe that it exists.
	The Russians with whom I had dealings listened to me with respect and longing, but on my most recent visit I told them about this Bill. For some time afterwards, the wonderful people with whom I was sitting had their arms around me in commiserationadmittedly, after a few vodkasfor the loss of liberty and the mistakes being made in my country.
	The weakness of the Bill is made even greater when a legislature is as supine and ineffectual as this one is. In the brief time that I have been in this House, Parliament has gradually given up any hope of carrying out its major role of acting as a control and check on the Executive. That inability was brilliantly set out earlier by my good and hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore). That will be his last speech in this place, and he could not have made a greater one. This may be my last speech too, and if it is not, it will not be for want of trying. If it is, I echo what my hon. Friend said: one of the great sadnesses that I will take away from the Chamber is that I have watched it become a Lilliputian assembly. In my time here, it has manifestly failed to act as a check on an over-mighty and increasingly arrogant Executive. There is no greater example of that than what we have witnessed in the course of this debate. For the Home Secretary to say that it is his responsibility to put people in prison and that he will arrogate that responsibility, and then to say that he will take a judicial function that will be subject to a judicial overview is not simply constitutionally illiterate but parliamentary drivel, and it should be treated as such by everyone who had the misfortune to hear it.
	May I say three things in the brief time available, provided that no one is decent enough to intervene? Much adulation has been heaped on the present Home Secretary, some of which is richly deserved. However, even if he were the most wonderful, beautiful, benign and wise judicial body, even if he had a reputation for Solomonic justice and Brechtian wisdom, it would not matter a fig. It would be a terrible mistake to hand judicial powers to the Administration, given that there are at least three examples of the dereliction of those powers.
	The first, of course, is Belmarsh itself. We are told that, after three years, the 13 people who have been held in that ghastly prison, with its 30 ft walls and razor wireI know, because I have been there on many occasions myselfare to be released, not into house arrest but on to the streets with tagging or non-derogated orders.

Douglas Hogg: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the necessary implication of the release of those people is that they should not have been held for three years in the first place?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: It is wonderful how the right hon. and learned Gentleman manages to anticipate almost the precise words that are about to fall from my mouth. In the past three years, successive Home Secretarieswell, mainly one Home Secretaryhave repeatedly told SIAC that those people are so dangerous that they cannot possibly be released from the misery and solitary confinement in which they have been interred. Now, they are all to be let out, because repentance is a wonderful and beautiful thing. Perhaps they have repented, but the idea that they have done so simultaneously would represent the greatest collective apostasy since St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians. It is clear that SIAC has been misled for the past three years about those people in Belmarsh. The new Home Secretary, however, has taken a different view, which demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the power that the Government are attempting to achieve.
	Secondly, much adulation has been heaped on our security services and I am certain that some of it is deserved. However, the Iraq war is fresh in our minds, along with the duplicity, lies, twisting and distortion of the security services' manifesto. We all know what happened: the information that the security services gave the Government was manipulated before it was placed before the people. The second dossier created on the basis of that intelligence destroyed forever people's faith in this and probably any Government's purveying information accurately and using it in a judicial or any other capacity. That is why Home Office briefings have been received with such contempt both inside and outside Parliament. They are perceived as worthless documents because no one believes the construction placed upon them.
	Thirdly, we have every reason to distrust the measure because British subjects will be placed under its aegis as a result of the rulings, speeches and opinions of the House of Lords. Is it coincidental that, when the Law Lords provide an opinion, there are suddenly risks from British subjects? Were there were no risks from them before that? If there were, why were we not told about them? If there were grave risks before that, why did someone not come to Parliament and say so? The Bill is a gross manipulation and distortion of the Law Lords' ruling.
	I struggled to find a harmless analogy for what the Government are doing. The best I could come up with is that of a boy who is viciously bullying some people at school, all of them girls. He is hauled up before nine school governors who tell him that he must stop it. He says, Fine, I'll stop it. I'll cut out the vicious bit and bully everyone. That is precisely the way in which the Government have reacted to the House of Lords judgment. The analogy is harmless and I hope that the point is not lost, even on the Home Secretary.
	The substance of the Bill is the supposed effect of judicial overview. I shall say slowly, clearly and distinctly, in case anyone on the Front Bench is listening to what is being said in this House, that there will be no judicial overview as to the fact of the vast majority of the control orders that are envisaged in this Bill. That should be repeated. There will be no factual judicial overview of any of the control orders that affect the right to work, the right to travel, the right to associate, the right to be seen in a specific place, the right to move, the right to have a passport, the right to be with specified people, the right not to be tagged, and the right not to be electronically monitored. For all those control orders, there will be no judicial overview as to fact. If people in this country realised that, their reaction would be very different from what we are told is the popular reaction at the moment.
	There will be greater judicial overview of house arrest, but, as has repeatedly been said, those who seek to challenge it in the courts will be bereft of and denied by statute all the information, disclosure and discovery that they need to put before a judge, because the Government have decreedI pointed the relevant clause out to the Home Secretarythat they do not have to disclose that material to anyone. What is more, even if someone achieved their aim and the court decided that the decision was flawed, they could be re-arrested on another control order the minute they walked out of the door. That process was refined in South Africa time and again under the 108-day rule.
	While referring to South Africa, I pay tribute to the wonderful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). I shall remember it for a long time after I leave this place.
	The procedures that the Government propose to put into effect can be found at the end of the Bill. The Government have arrogated to themselves the right to create rules covering evidence, the burden of proof, lack of evidence, and the amount of disclosure. Those completely new rules of court will be introduced by statutory instrument and without proper consultation or scrutiny in this House.

Tam Dalyell: Can my hon. Friend explain to a non-lawyer what is involved in the rules of disclosure in obviously delicate circumstances?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I can, but it would take me a couple of hours. Very briefly, let me tell my good and hon. Friend that under the present criminal justice system, it is implicit that the prosecution, if in possession of any factual, documentary or other material that might assist the defence, must disclose it to the defence.

William Cash: I want to ask a simple question. In light of what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said in his compelling speech, does he think that there is a cat in hell's chance that this legislation will not be overturned by the Law Lords again?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: I know nothing about the other place. I still live in the forlorn hope that the Bill might be overturned hereif not now, then on Monday.
	It cannot be repeated often enough that we will never decrease the sum total of human wickedness by decreasing the sum total of human liberty. If we act in that way, we run the extreme risk of increasing the sum total of human wickedness by denying these very liberties to those who deserve them. Looking back over the past seven years, I am very sorry to reflect on the number of occasions when I have had boringly to repeat that phrase.

David Trimble: The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) referred to the vigour with which the Home Secretary introduced this debate, and I think that he meant that critically. We would normally refer to the Home Secretary's vigour, which was very much on display today and yesterday, with approbation. We can contrast that with the manner in which Northern Ireland affairs are dealt with; indeed, that contrast was very apparent yesterday. However, having said that, I am not entirely happy with the Bill for a number of reasons.
	As several Members have said, there is no need to rush through the Bill in this way. The Prime Minister said this afternoon that that was necessary because the Government had to act after the House of Lords judicial ruling. No, they did not. The Human Rights Act 1998 was drafted in such a way as to enable Parliament to disregard rulings made under that Act if it so wished, and that could be done in this case. Furthermore, as was pointed out, given that the Home Secretary said that he would not introduce derogation control orders, other parts of the legislation could have been proceeded with and we could have left consideration of this matter in greater detail for another day. There was no need to rush through this legislation.
	I am also not happy about the content of the Bill. First, I am unhappy about the breadth of the control orders. Other Members have already referred to issues relating to paragraphs (a) to (o) in clause 1, and reference has also been made to the moving speech of the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett). Her experiences in South Africa demonstrate the impact that orders of this nature can have. There is also a practical point that I raised in an intervention on the Home Secretary. I am unclear how these orders will be enforced. Reference has been made to tagging, but tagging merely helps to identify where a person is; it does not identify his activities.
	It will not be possible to enforce these control orders without a massive operation by the police and the security services. There will have to be surveillance of people who are subject to such orders and that will take up a tremendous amount of time. That will not be surveillance of people who are active in terrorist organisations, because once the control orders are imposed, that will reveal to the organisation that the authorities are aware of that person and they will probably cease to be active within that organisation. Therefore, we will be devoting a great deal of resources to monitoring someone who is no longer the threat that they once were. The terrorist organisation will then recruit someone else, whereas if we merely maintain surveillance, we would be watching someone who was active, so we would be using our resources much more efficiently. Unless there is more to this provision, I continue to have great difficulty with its breadth and with the question of enforcement.
	Much reference has been made to judicial procedures, and in the early part of the debate we discussed the question of when judicial proceedings should take place. As the debate went on, it became clear that that was not the real point. The real point about judicial proceedings was made by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and the hon. and learned Member for Medwaythat the judicial proceedings provided for under the Bill are not judicial proceedings as we understand them, but only a shadow of a judicial proceeding, because material is not disclosed and because the defendant, if we can use that term, is not told what the case against them is.
	It being Seven o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Exempted business),
	That, at this day's sitting, the Second Reading of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until Eight o'clock.[Mr. Heppell.]
	Question agreed to.
	Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

David Trimble: I am glad that we have the extra hour to consider the matter, but as I am conscious that other Members want to speak I shall not relax my pace too much.
	I was pointing out that these are not judicial proceedings in the normal way. I was concerned by the line being taken by the Liberal Democrat spokesman as I had the impression from what he was saying that the Liberal Democrats would be happy to compromise with the Government if a little more were added, especially on the question of judicial proceedings. If the Liberal Democrats are minded to do that, it would be a mistake. There may be other ways to compromise, but that is not one of them.

David Heath: I want to make it absolutely plain that there is no question of our compromising with the Government about the process being put in the hands of the judiciary, not an elected Minister of the Crown.

David Trimble: That reinforces my concern. The judicial proceedings that you will be settling for will be a sham and will be dangerous for the legal process of this country. You will be settling for a judicial process that is not a true one. That is the problem. Judges are there to make decisions based on legally admissible evidence; they are not there to make decisions on intelligence. Judges cannot be expected to assess intelligence, but the orders will operate only on the basis of intelligence, so it is foolish to think[Interruption.] You would do better to adopt a position of outright opposition to the orders rather than taking the route that you are following at the moment[Interruption]I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should address my remarks to the Liberal Democrats through you, but I was slightly irritated at that point.

David Heath: rose

David Trimble: I shall not take another intervention. I have made my point and I want to reinforce it by saying that I am surprised that the judges appear to have accepted, or agreed to, those proceedings.
	The form of judicial proceedings that we shall have as a result of the Bill will bring the courts into disrepute, will lower public esteem for the courts and will create huge difficulties for judges. I am surprised that they have agreed to such provisions and I suspect that when they come to operate them they will have second thoughts. The question then is: what should be done? The Home Secretary was quite rightthere is a huge problem and we have to tackle it.
	Reference has been made to the use of intercept evidence, a matter I brought to the House about a dozen years ago and to which I have returned on several occasions. I have never found the Government's arguments against it convincing. The right hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) made the point in his speech that changing the law would not compel the introduction of intercept evidence, but would give a discretion that may or may not be exercised and, indeed, could be exercised in such a way as to protect sources.
	Another reason given is that the use of such evidence would let terrorists and other criminals realise the extent of surveillance. I have always thought that argument stupid. It assumes that terrorists and criminals do not already know that there is surveillance. They do know about surveillance and they also have a fairly clear idea of its extent. The authorities may have some technical edges of which terrorists are not yet aware, but I suspect that any technical advantage will be temporary and may shift from time to time. What that argument reveals, however, is that the heads of the intelligence servicesif they hold that viewassume that they are dealing with rather stupid people in terrorist organisations, and that concerns me because those people are not stupid. If the authorities and the intelligence agencies assume that they are dealing with stupid people who do not know what is going on, they are more likely to make mistakes in their approach to them, so I go back to the question and continue to endorse the use of intercept evidence.
	There is also the questionI believe that Lord Carlile picks it up in his report as wellof whether to use non-jury courts, along the lines of those used in Northern Ireland. That is a good idea. The so-called Diplock courts in Northern Ireland were a success, although they were not perfectI was involved in one case where there was a clear miscarriage of justice. However, I think that there have been fewer miscarriages of justice in Diplock courts than in jury trials in this jurisdiction. Therefore, I recommend that, although I have to say that I think that Lord Carlile made a mistake by suggesting that there would be three-judge courts rather than single-judge courts. That is too extensive a point to deal with now, but there is an awful lot to be said for placing the clear, undivided responsibility on a person who then has to produce his reasons for scrutiny. Once there is more than one person, there is the opportunity to hide behind, and rely on, other people's judgment. Moving beyond one judge is a mistake.
	The other thing that can and should be done is surveillance, which has been mentioned in the debate. That can be done. If that is not sufficient and we are dealing with a real emergency, there is something left in reserve that can be used, but only in dire circumstancesnamely, a return to Executive detention, as applied in wartime and on a number of occasions in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That is not a matter to be dealt with lightly, but it is not matter to be discarded. Those who spoke of it in terms of something that could never, ever be done are making a very serious mistake. There may be circumstances in which it is necessary, but it should be done only in extreme circumstances. If it is done, it is indeed a draconian measure, but the fact that it is so draconian means that it will be used only sparingly.
	What bothers me about control orders is that they will become an easy option and people will slip into using of them because they will think, It's only a control order. It's not the same as putting a person in prison. It's limiting what they can do. Over the years, the number of control orders will gradually accumulate and the problems that arise will grow as a result.
	I have reached a conclusion that the legislation has been brought forward too soon. It will not be subject to proper scrutiny and it is fundamentally flawed. Consequently, I would be opposed to it. I have a little concern about the reasoned amendment that has been tabled by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties because it could be interpreted as ruling out the reserve power of Executive detention, which I believe must be available. Consequently, I do not regard that part of the reasoned amendment with favour, but, of course, one takes a balanced look at the matter and, on the whole at the end of the day, it is question of one's view on the Bill, and that is what will be expressed. I will not regard myself as being in any way bound by some of the persiflage that I find in the Liberal Democrat and Conservative amendment.

Vera Baird: I was glad to hear the Home Secretary once again reiterate his commitment to prosecution as his first choice. The problem is that we have been saying that for about three years now and there is no real evidence that anybody has tried to prosecute such people. I accept readily what he said about 700 people being arrested in the past year under the prevention of terrorism Acts. Many have been charged, some have been convicted and, no doubt, some have trials pending. I know that that is true because quite a lot of my former colleagues are making a lot of money out of those trials. The point is not that terrorists are not being prosecuted; it is that there is nothing to add reality to the Home Office assertion that prosecution is the first choice for those people.
	The Home Secretary has told the Select Committee on Home Affairs that the prosecution issues are very fully considered, but, frankly, it is not the job of the Home Office to decide whether people who are suspected of offences should be prosecuted. It is the specific constitutional job of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the files should be sent to him now.
	It is implicit when applying for a control order that a decision has already been taken that a person cannot be prosecuted. That decision must be taken independently, so the Bill should set out explicitly that that must be done. The constitution sets out that the clear way of ascertaining whether a person can be prosecuted is through the Director of Public Prosecutions, so there is no reason not to make use of him.
	The Home Secretary said both today and yesterday that he was considering new offences, such as being involved in preparation for acts of terrorism. He will of course consult the DPP about such offences. However, if the DPP were asked to look at the files in great detail and found that he could not make such a prosecution, he would be in pole position to advise on the additional offences, or the widening of admissibility, that might facilitate a prosecution in specific cases. We all sit in the Chamber guessing that intercept evidence, other offences or hearsay might help, but we have no idea. We should get the expert prosecutor to examine the problem now.
	Such a procedure would above all prove to the public that an independent eye was being cast over the matter. If the consequence of being unable to prosecute is a control order, it is imperative that it does not look as though the Home Secretary is sitting in a huddle with the intelligence services to decide who will be locked up. It must be plain that the constitutionally charged official has made an independent decision.
	I do not know whether the Government fear that it would be politically difficult to put a control order on a person who was prosecuted yet acquitted, and thus an innocent man. If that is in their mind, it should not be. We put restraint orders on people who are acquitted of domestic violence and harassment, and for centuries we have bound over acquitted people to be on good behaviour if something about their conduct has caused the court to be worried about what they might do in the future. Mentioning the court brings me on to control orders.
	I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on grasping the need for proportionality and setting out a list of the possible levels of control that he intends to use only to meet the threat as necessary. Of course such measures will be used sparingly, but they are immensely strong. Hon. Members have cited them, so I will not repeat them all, but instead only mention several.
	It will be possible to put a restriction on people's work or business, presumably by telling them that they cannot carry out their business or go to work. It will be possible to put a restriction on people's association or communication with specified persons, presumably including any member of their families, such as children and parents. It will be possible to put a restriction on people in respect of their place of residence and the people to whom they give access to their place of residence. Presumably people could be told to move house, or told that they could not move to where they wanted. Another person will be able to restrict someone's movements under the aegis of the measures, and it will be possible for restrictions to be put on where people can go in the UK or outside it. It will even be possible to specify a small part of the UK to be restricted to. That measure could presumably ban people from the streets outside their houses, so it would effectively cause people to be locked up in their own houses. The measures will allow people to be tagged and provide that they must agree to allow people into their houses so that they can be searched. People will also be required to give advance information about their movements, if requested.
	I have only cited examples. It is quite clear from clause 1 that the Home Office has complete latitude to impose any condition that it sees fit as long as that is necessary to restrict people about whom there are reasonable grounds to suspect involvement in terrorism-related activity. Just about anything can be done under a control order under clause 1 short of house arrest, but that power exists in clause 2, so I guess that the clause covers everything falling short of that.
	The Home Secretary has been rightly praised in the round for upping the judicial scrutiny of the powers, but that will not apply to such control orders. This has been said once, but let me say it again pretty clearly, rather than in lawyers' code, so that people can understand it. Unlike the situation under clause 2 for a derogation control ordera locking-up orderwhen there will be an automatic reference to the court by the Home Secretary within seven days, a control order under clause 1 will be subject to appeal only as and when an individual chooses to make one. The appeal will be based on whether the decision to impose a control order, or find a person to be a terrorist, is flawed. The court is scrutinising not whether the order should have been made, but whether it has been made in the right way.
	Therefore, no court will consider whether there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the person is or has been involved with terrorism-related activity. The question of whether the control order is necessary will not be considered. The questions that will be considered are whether the Home Secretary took the right things into account, left nothing out or did not consider something that he should have done when he made his decision. If the decision is quashed, all the Home Secretary must do is take into account what he left out, or leave out what he should not have put in, and make the same decision again, and there is no appealit is finished.
	My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that if the extent of the control order is so stringent that it would take away liberty, it will tip over into the appeal procedure for clause 2. In my view, however, that is not correct at all. The clause 2 derogation-based house arrest orders can be made only if there is a derogation. When he makes an order for house arrest, he must refer that fact to the High Court, and the Court must hear it within seven days. Making a house arrest order under derogation triggers the appeal to the High Court, which must confirm or quash the order within seven days. That is the only way that one can get any order into the High Court. One cannot get a control order into it. Only when there is a derogation, which there is not, and there is no intention of having one, and only when there is a clause 2 house arrest order, which there will not be in the case of a clause 1 order, can that appeal follow. There will be no scrutiny of the facts at all, and while I accept that there is better scrutiny for house arrest orders, it is incorrect to suggest that that will be applicable to control orders. The only appeal against the control order will be scrutiny of the decision, which is insufficient, poor calibre and adds enormous weight to the argument that the judiciary must be involved from the outset and not later.
	In making that argument, I rely on the fact that the Home Secretary has brought judicial scrutiny much closer with regard to derogation-based lock-up orders. He has accepted that on that case. My argument to him is that if one has the power to make a lock-up order under a derogation, but one must refer it to the High Court, which must confirm it or quash it within seven days, that is only a provisional order and the Court is really making the order.
	It is not clear to methis is probably an unpopular argument in the House, given the atmosphere tonightthat there is truly a great erosion of human rights as between a court ordering a control order and, on the other hand, the Secretary of State ordering a control order with the duty to refer it for quashing or confirmation within seven days, in which case it could be quashed or confirmed within as little as a day. I cannot see a massive erosion of human rights as between those two. Obviously, however, it is of the utmost importance; although technically not necessarily massively important, it has a huge impact on the public's view of exactly what we are doing with such people.
	If the true position is that because the Home Secretary must get the control order confirmed or quashed within seven days he has really only made a provisional order, how far away is that from him making up his mind that he wants an order, making an application to the court ex parte and asking the court to make a decision within seven days? It is about two penny worth away, as my mother would have put it, is it not?

Robert Marshall-Andrews: Is not the answer to the hypothetical question that my hon. and learned Friend postulates that if I were to go to the court, I would require the material that the court will require, and I would need to be shown the documents on which the Home Secretary had based his decision in order for the court to exercise a proper jurisdiction? This Bill contains no provision for me to get that disclosure.

Vera Baird: As between making an order and having an appeal within seven days, for which the Home Office has to furnish material, the furnishing of material at the outset when the application is made and requiring the matter to be determined within seven days means that there is not spitting distance between the two. Once we accept, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has for the high-level orders, the principle of close judicial scrutiny, there is little difference to be found. There is therefore every argument for taking the extra step and bringing the judiciary in at the beginning.
	That would not end all the problems. I accept what many Members have said about the problems of evidence, special advocates putting the case and the opportunity of challenge. All these matters can be solved with a good deal of effort and cross-party will, if only we can come up with a framework with which all of us are comfortable and within which we could work.
	That extra step would end all of the outcry about Executive detention. It would end all of the backlash of the civil liberties groups. It would put away much of the fear of exciting community unrest because of eroding trial rights and replacing that process with Executive detention. It would quiet the public and it would restore our constitution.
	I shall vote tonight with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary because he has clearly said that he understands the issue and that he will consider it extremely seriously. I see no alternative, with 14 March looming large, but to try to get this proposed legislation right in time. I say to my right hon. Friend that I hope that between tonight, when I give him my vote, and the next opportunity for us all to vote, he takes the extra step.

Crispin Blunt: It is 740 years since Reigate first returned a Member of Parliament, so I have the opportunity to make a truncated contribution to the debate. Some Members will not have the opportunity to make any contribution to this extremely important debate. As the debate comes to a conclusion, it is opportune to weigh in the balance what we are discussing and to look back at the rights that have been acquired by Britons over the centuries.
	I turn first to the Magna Carta, 790 years ago. Chapter 29 stated that no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or seized of his freehold or liberties or
	free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either justice or right.
	These statements and judgments echo down the years.
	In 1615, a Chief Justice, Lord Coke, said:
	By the law of God, none ought to be imprisoned but with the cause expressed in the return of his imprisonment, as appeareth in the Acts of the Apostles.
	I do not think that I would have expressed the matter quite like that, but this Parliament expressed it in the Petition of Right. In the fifth clause it set out the grievance that
	divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause shewed; and when for their deliverance they were brought before your justices, by your majesty's Writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer; no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your majesty's special command, signified by the lords of your privy-council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with any thing to which they might make answer according to the law.
	In 1770, when a Mr. Stewart brought his slave, Somerset, to England, Lord Justice Mansfield said:
	Every man who comes into England is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may heretofore have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin. The air of England is too pure for any slave to breathe. Let the black go free.
	Then, 140 years later, in a judgment already referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash)the Liversidge v. Anderson case, a wartime internment caseLord Atkin said that
	one of the pillars of liberty is that in English law every imprisonment is prime facie unlawful and that it is for the person directing the imprisonment to justify his act.
	That is what is at stake in the passage of this Bill, and I wish that more hon. Members were aware of the enormity of what the Government are inviting us to do this evening.
	Why now? On Monday, the Leader of the House announced in the business statement that the Bill is necessary because the existing powers will expire on 14 March. When the Home Secretary made his statement on the following day, however, he said that he does not need all the powers in the Bill. Which is it? We know that my hon. Friends have proposed an alternative to enable the Government to keep those powers on the statute book.
	The Bill rests on an assumption about the threat faced by the United Kingdom. In a previous incarnation, I was a soldier, working on the assumption that I could trust the integrity of the chain of command when I was given orders and that I could believe that those orders were beneficial and well intentioned. There is a difference between a soldier making those judgments and Parliament imposing the proper restrictions on the Executive, which is a test not necessarily for this Home Secretary but for any Home Secretary in any Executive. That is the standard that we should apply.
	My experience in this House in the past seven and a half years leads me to believe that I cannot trust this Executive. I regret to say that I voted for the war in Iraq. I heard the final speech by the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), and I felt rebuked by the fact that I had allowed myself to make what I believe was a misjudgment on the basis of the case that the Prime Minister presented to the House and set out to the country in a television broadcast. I believed what he said about the nature of the threat to the United Kingdom, and I feel that I was wilfully misled.
	In my eyes, the Prime Minister and the Executive no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman reconsider and withdraw that remark about the Prime Minister?

Crispin Blunt: I will, of course, observe parliamentary convention and withdraw the remark.
	The Government no longer enjoy the benefit of the doubt when they come to the House of the Commons or make their case to the wider public on the threat that the United Kingdom faces. That is one of the reasons why we urgently need a change of Prime Minister. If the Prime Minister has to come to this House again and say that the UK faces a threat that necessitates the UK going to war in order to deal with it, I for one will not give him the benefit of the doubt, which is a huge handicap for any Prime Minister to carry. That point applies directly to the measures that we are being invited to endorse this evening.
	The Home Secretary laid out what he sees as the qualitatively different threat from al-Qaeda, which he says is different from anything that has gone before, and set out five of its elementsits ideology, its lack of restraint, the suicidal readiness of its followers, the different order of its capability and resources and its global reach. Some of those propositions are contestable. In terms of taking on the ideology of the French revolution, as it would have appeared to this Parliament in 1792 or 1793, or taking on the ideology of communism for most of the 20th century, the threat is not qualitatively different.
	Yesterday, the Government published a paper to support the Bill, listing all the different actions taken by international terrorists. We must be slightly more sophisticated in assessing the threat, and it can be argued that we do not understand al-Qaeda terribly well. If we examine the individual examples of international terrorist attacks since 9/11, a number of different attacks can be explained because they relate to national struggles, such as the struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Al-Qaeda is a predominantly Saudi organisation that is conducting a battle that concerns the control of Saudi Arabia, which is its primary objective. I do not know whether my instincts are correct, but I have a duty to examine the case that the Government are putting forward. In the modern era, the state, in taking on al-Qaeda, has a number of significant advantages that were not available to states taking on threats to the UK before.
	The first is that since the war in Afghanistanundertaken, quite properly, to ensure that al-Qaeda had no place to hidethere is no state within which al-Qaeda can hide. There is international uniformity on bearing down on al-Qaedait has no friends. Surveillance techniques have improved significantly in the past seven years, as has information technology, giving the Government enormous powers to gather information about people. Therefore, I believe that taking these powers now is counter-productive. The Bill is a victory for al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda should not be given this victory.

Mark Fisher: Consideration of the Bill this afternoon has demonstrated profound weaknesses in this Parliament. We have been debating the central elements of our democracy and of our human and judicial rights: habeas corpus, the independence of the judiciary, and the separation of the powers that distinguish our political system between the judiciary, the legislature and the Executive. Apart from the heroic small group of hon. Members who have been here throughout and contributed to an outstanding debate, where have our colleagues been on these issues? If we are not sent to this Parliament to debate the future of these issues, for what are we sent here?
	I fear that in spite of the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) we are going to fail a test in terms of the scrutiny that we have been sent here to apply to Government business. We have done so in the rigour of the debate and in the argument, but I fear that in a few minutes' time, those who were absent and have not heard this excellent debate are going to push the measure through. We will fail in our responsibility to be a check and a balance on the Executive on this most vital issue.
	We are making bad law today, or are risking doing so. If so, we are failing as a Parliament. We have to start reasserting the right and the duty of this Parliament to carry out independent scrutiny of the Executive.

Frank Field: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mark Fisher: Another hon. Gentleman wants to get in and I want to give him a minute or two.
	We should make a start here today. In particular, those hon. Members who have not been able to be in the Chamber today should read this very good debate and consider it over the weekend. I hope that on Monday, this Chamber will be full for the consideration of issues that are right at the centre of our democracy.

Alistair Carmichael: This has been, without hesitation, the best debate in which I have had the privilege to take part since I came to this place, and the contribution of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) was one of the best in it so far.
	I wish to make a few brief remarks about the operation of the schedule to the Bill, particularly as it pertains to Scotland. As I have made clear, this is a matter in which the Government seek to intrude upon the proper operation of the devolution settlement. The question of rules of court in Scotland is, quite properly, within the remit of the Scottish Parliament. I should like the Minister to tell us what consultation there has been with the Scottish Executive in relation to this, and what opportunity there will be not just for the Scottish Executive but for the Scottish Parliament to express a view. Ifas would be constitutionally, or at least morally, proper, in my viewa Sewel motion were to be presented, I cannot envisage the circumstances in which my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament would be supportive of it. The way in which the measure seeks to graft alien principles such as the SIAC procedures on to the judicial process in Scotland is, in my view, absolutely unacceptable. The position of special advocates strikes at the heart of the lawyer-client relationship and leaves it impossible for any lawyer properly to execute their duties and ethics. It is a corrupt and corrupting system, it is bereft of integrity and I cannot countenance its ever being part of the Scottish legal system.

Dominic Grieve: This has indeed been an extraordinary debate, and I apologise to hon. Members if, because of the short time for the winding-up speeches, I cannot do justice to all the contributions that have been made.
	A sensible place to start is with the three hon. Membersjust threewho said that they would support the Government tonight. All threethe right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) and the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore)made speeches which, I am bound to say having listened to them, presented some of the most cogent arguments as to why the legislation is fundamentally flawed.
	The hon. Member for Hendon effectively said that the operation of control orders would be so unwieldy as to be almost unworkable. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen made the important point that the decisions that will be taken to impose control orders will effectively block off the possibility of prosecution and reduce the likelihood of that taking place. The hon. and learned Member for Redcar raised a huge number of issues and I fully appreciate that her support was out of loyalty and conditional upon changes being brought about.
	There were a large number of other contributions. They ranged from those that sought to look in great detail at some of the legal issues based on experience and knowledgefrom my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews)to the visceral. There is nothing wrong with visceral contributions on an issue that ought to affect us all viscerally.
	Whatever else one can say, whether one is coming to the House to argue in favour of the Bill or against it, the enormity of what we are debating tonight cannot be overlooked. Nothing has worried me more in the course of the debate than the impression given by those on the Treasury Bench that while this is a difficult issue, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and that subject to some tweaking and discussion on the detail, there really can be no objection, in view of the security situation, to suddenly embarking upon this piece of revolutionary legislation that places in the hands of the Executive power over the liberty of the subject. I could not disagree more with the glibness of that approach, and I very much regret it.
	I say to the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety, who I understand will reply to the debate, that she and the Government face a difficult task. One of the problems is that they are privy to lots of information that they cannot share with us, and I appreciate that. But equally, they are privy to lots of information that they can share with us. If the Minister, having been asked yesterday by a journalist on Newsnight, I think seven times, whether she could explain when the Government decided that the memorandum on the back of the renewal notice that said that it was possible and legal to renew the existing powers was no longer their view, refuses to answer, how can we start out with a sensible debate on important issues?
	For the avoidance of doubt, I will now tell the Home Secretary exactly where we stand. A huge number of issues relating to this legislation need to be looked at separately. First, the powers that the Bill creates should be exercised not by the Home Secretary but by a judge. I get the impression that the Government may be beginning to shift on that point. If they are, I wish to heaven that the Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety would state the logical and obvious: judges will have to make the decisions. However, the problem goes much further. It is not simply a matter of the decision, but of the entire process.
	I must make a confession. When Conservative Members first informally discussed whether judges should make the decision, I felt an almost visceralto use that word againrevulsion at the prospect of our asking judges to do that. We are not considering a judicial process at all. It is important that every Member who intends to vote at 8 pm understands that this is not and cannot be a judicial process.
	In our constitution, judicial processes involve fairness and hearing the other side's arguments. That means a level playing field on which people can answer the serious allegations that are made against them before they are deprived of their freedom. However, whether a decision is made by judges, or by the Home Secretary and subsequently judicially reviewed, we will establish a system where none of those things apply. I accept that that is a problem for the Government and that they did not intend such a consequence. However, the proceedings will be secret and large quantities of the evidence will, of necessity, be concealed from the defendant, who will not be able to answer the allegations made against him or obtain full representation even through the mechanism of the special advocate procedure.
	The Government have had more than a year to examine Lord Carlile's critique of the operation of the special advocate procedure. I appreciate that the Home Secretary has not been in his post for long and that he has inherited an unfortunate legacy from someone who rode roughshod over liberties in this country in a breathtaking manner. Nevertheless, a year on from Lord Carlile's critique, we have not received a Government response about the way in which the special advocate procedure can be improved. Such details must be addressed. They cannot simply be brushed under the carpet. If we embark on the course of action that the Government propose and introduce control orders, we must consider carefully every line of the Bill to understand the way in which we can improve it to the best of our ability.
	Today, great play was made of questions, especially to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, such as, Well, you're against control orders, aren't you? Of course we should be against control orders. As a principle, control orders should be anathema to every democrat. However, that is not to say that there may not be occasions when we have to swallow the unpalatable. I have told the Home SecretaryI repeat it todaythat, although control orders may be unpalatable, we may have to consider them. However, we must ask ourselves to what extent they serve a useful purpose.
	An extraordinary state of affairs already pertains. The Home Secretary is rushing the Bill through because the Belmarsh deadline is imminent. However, when the deadline arrives, even with the control orders in place, the people will be released into the community. The Home Secretary has told us that he does not see the necessity of introducing house arrest provisions at the moment. I repeat that the Bill does not only provide for house arrest. The order could be, Go and live in a cottage on Benbecula, or Go and live in the Bicester asylum seekers' accommodation. That is possible under the powers that we are creating.
	Do the control orders serve a purpose? If we do not intend to provide for house arrest now, why should we give the Home Secretary the power to do something, which would almost certainly breach the European convention on human rights on a challenge, and could not be maintained if it went back to the House of Lords? I believe that he has received legal advice to that effect. If that is the inevitable outcome, there is no point in our including it in the legislation nowand that leaves us with control orders which fall short of home detention.
	As we go through the Bill on Monday, the Home Secretary will have to explain how each of the measures that he has spelt out line by line will have a useful function in preventing people from coming along and blowing themselves up either here or outside Parliament, or killing other people. At the moment, I still need some convincing. I can see how control orders might help a little, but the idea that they will prevent determined individuals who are suicide bombers from escaping the clutches of supervision and committing atrocities is one that I do not entirely accept. The point was well made today that surveillance might be more effective, although I am mindful of the fact that surveillance has its problems as well.
	I want to give the Minister ample time to respond, because I think she has much to answer. Let me simply say this. The more the debate has gone on, the more we have asked ourselves whether the Bill is curable by amendment. That question may seem very relevant to many Members who are considering how they will vote at 8 pm. I accept that if Members think the Bill is indeed curable by amendment, that may be a reason for giving the Government the benefit of the doubt and, on Monday, going to work to see what can be done about itbut we need only look at the extent of the problems in the document to see that it is unamendable.
	Is the Home Secretary seriously considering the possibility that the House should allow rules of court to be prepared by statutory instrument when those rules will be entirely unlike any others that have ever been put together in this country? As I said earlier, the measure requires a system of justice entirely different from any under which we currently operate. That in itself ought to give every hon. Member pause for thought before he or she goes into the Lobby to support the Bill.
	What if the Bill is defeated? What if the amendment is carried? I encourage hon. Members to vote for it. We will help the Government if they come back with a proposal quickly. We told the Home Secretary that we would help to extend the existing powers for a short period. I have no desire to extend the existing powers. I accept that they are flawed, and the House of Lords has said that they do not comply with the Human Rights Act. Those are good reasons for getting rid of them. I am bound to say that if that is the small measure we must give the Government to enable them to go away and be sensible, and engage in a proper dialogue we will do it, but until we are given some sign from the Government, the best thing that hon. Members who are true to the oath that they took when they came here, and to our duties to our constituents, can do is to get rid of a Bill which is one of the most horrible things I have seen since I came to the House.

Hazel Blears: We have had a tremendous debate over the past four or five hours, certainly the most important in which I have taken part during my time here. I am grateful to Members of all parties for their contributions. I shall make a few preliminary remarks before dealing with as many comments as I can.
	First, let me make it clear that, in my view, it is essential to the prevention of terrorism for us to remain above the party political fray. There is no issue more pressing, more salient or more difficult to resolve than the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of wider society, and where to strike that balance is the very stuff of politics. Today's debate, however, is not theoretical. We have heard a lot of theory today, but the debate is real, it is here and it is now. All the evidence and the experience in Bali, Madrid, Iraq and elsewhere shows that terror cells do exist, they are active and they are plotting new atrocities.
	So what should Government do? The theories of rights look pretty feeble in the face of the suicide bomber or the suicide hijacker. Edmund Burke and Tom Paine had no concept of the threat that we face from terrorist foes, so our deliberations must reflect the realities, not the theories. No Government faced with the scale of threat that we currently face could fail to act and still expect the support of the public. We must defend the freedoms of the overwhelming majority, who want to live in peace and security, and tackle the tiny minority who are prepared to kill themselves in order to destroy our way of life. I remain convinced that on this fundamental issue we have struck the right balance.
	I will now try to deal with the issues that have been raised. I welcome the willingness of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) at least to engage with the legislation. He said that he does not particularly like the idea of control orders but he is willing to see whether the Bill can be improved. We certainly all share that aim.
	The right hon. Gentleman raised specific issues and wanted other measures to be considered. He asked whether other offences such as acts preparatory to the commission of terrorism could be considered. We are actively looking at that. The Home Secretary said that we will look at that and possibly bring forward further legislation.
	The right hon. Gentleman talked about intercept evidence. Many hon. Members have mentioned that againI think that this is the third or fourth occasion in recent weeks that we have talked about it. He said that, since al-Qaeda knows about US intercept, how would our use of it mean that its practices were altered? Although simple forms of intercept such as wire and phone tapping may well be general knowledge, some of our more sophisticated capabilities, using intercept in different ways, are not necessarily known to those terrorists. If those capabilities become widely known, the terrorists will change the way in which they operate and our ability to disrupt them and to thwart their attacks will be severely compromised.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked why it is suddenly necessary to impose these control orders. That issue has been raised more generally. It is necessary now not only because we have to respond to the Law Lords' judgment, but because, as we have done more and more operations to disrupt terrorists, we have found that the threat from British citizens has been developing in a way that was not clear to us immediately following 9/11. Therefore, there is a need now to have powers that respond to the threat not just from foreign nationals but from British citizens.
	I say a genuine thank you to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) for his constructive approach to the problem. He is right to say that there is common ground between us and he laid that out in a genuine way. We need to have a regime in place by 14 March to protect the public. He does not want the part 4 powers to be renewed. He wants to see whether we can put something in place. I agree entirely that we need to do more on deportation, getting memorandums of understanding with those third countries, provided that they are robust in human rights terms, to see whether we can return people to where they have come from.
	The hon. Gentleman said that control orders could be a useful tool in the variety of mechanisms available to us, and he has generously acknowledged the considerable movement we have made in having a high level of judicial scrutiny, involvement and oversight in the process. However, he is also right to say that there is disagreement between us. There remains the issue of the point at which the judiciary get involved. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) said that there was perhaps tuppence between us in terms of when the judiciary should get involved. The Home Secretary has said that we will consider the matter further. No doubt we will debate it in detail on Monday in Committee. We are happy to do that but that is an area where there remains disagreement between us.

Win Griffiths: I thank the Home Secretary for his commitment to look again at the issue of the primacy of the judiciary in this process. I hope that on Monday we will have a full and successful debate, so a vote for Second Reading will mean a vote for Third Reading. I hope that we do not have to vote against Third Reading because we have not made any progress.

Hazel Blears: I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will continue to engage in detail on this issue when we look at the Bill line by line. We certainly will be doing that on Monday.
	The hon. Member for Winchester raised issues about the standard of proof, reasonable suspicion and the balance of probabilities. Another issue he raised was about the fact that there are already police powers to hold people in detention for 14 days. He asked why we should not use those police powers, rather than seeking a seven-day period for the control order. I think that he acknowledged that the current police powers relate to an ongoing investigation and therefore may not be appropriate, but I am sure that we can explore that in greater detail next week, too.
	I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), who raised the possibility of exploring the idea of an interim application. We went on to discuss whether such an application would be ex parte in those circumstances. Those are the sort of detailed matters that we can genuinely discuss on Monday.
	I was saddened by the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore). I acknowledge his strength of feeling, but if that was his last speech in the House, it is a shame that he could not have spoken about a more constructive subject and offered something more positive. I really feltthat his contribution was very sad indeed[Interruption.]
	I was grateful for the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), who adopted a very practical approach to the issues. He said that there was too much theoretical legalistic language in tonight's debate and that we needed to get the balance right. He raised some serious issues about what happens when a control order is decided on. He asked whether a decision is taken then about prosecution and on whose advice. I can tell him that every single time that a control order is considered, advice will be sought from the Crown Prosecution Service, as it is now, about whether a prosecution is possible. Prosecution is always our preferred option.
	Several hon. Members asked about sending the papers to the Director of Public Prosecutions. I can confirm that the CPS is engaged, but we will look to see whether we can do anything further on this matter. I want to tell the House that a decision to make a control order does not mean that investigation stops. Indeed, investigations have continued into some of the current detainees and further charges have been brought. It is not the case that, once an order is made, all the work on investigation and prosecution comes to a full stop.
	The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) questioned the advice of the security services and said that it was the job of Ministers to probe, test and evaluate that advice and reach their own decisions. I can give him the assurance that that is exactly what Ministers do: we receive the advice of the security services, but then test it in order to reach our own viewpoint. He said that we should not pass off responsibility to officials, and we are certainly not doing so. Interestingly, the same argument could be applied to passing off our responsibility to the judiciary. That was one of the matters raised by the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), but I can reassure him about that.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who unfortunately cannot be with us now, did not accept the need for control orders and argued that it was the job of the Government to test whether such powers were necessary. He served on the Newton committee, for which I am grateful, and he also raised the matter of using intercept evidence. I remind the House again that much of the intercept evidence used in other countries is the product of law enforcement agencies. They do not use intelligence product to anything like the extent that we do in this country. I have a genuine fear that, if intelligence product were used, we would see the sources drying up significantly in the future.
	As to the contribution of the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), does he accept that there is a serious threat, which I thought was fairly common ground? Does he accept that some people cannot be prosecuted through a conventional legal system? Does he accept that detention in prison under part 4 is not sustainable in the light of the Law Lords' judgment? Frankly, in those circumstances, what would he do? We received no answer to that question whatever.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) made a short and powerful speech in which he said that he would support control orders up to derogation. I hope to persuade him of the need for the extra powers in our later line-by-line examination of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), who has a proud record on constitutional issues, asked for further change, but recognised that extraordinary times need extraordinary measures. I was grateful to him for that.
	The hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) asked about European issues and invited us to take serious note of the tone of the debate. I can certainly give him the assurance that we will do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett) made a powerful and moving speech, in which she recounted her personal experience. She said that she could not support the Government on control orders this evening. I hope that she will remain engaged in the debate over the next few days, as she raised some serious and important points.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and to all those hon. Members who offered support. I end by placing on record my appreciation of the work of the security services. They have helped protect this country over the past three and a half years, but have no forum in which they can explain themselves. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for keeping us safe.
	It being Eight o'clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [this day].

Question put, That the amendment be made.
	The House divided: Ayes 216, Noes 316.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Main Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 62 (Amendment on Second or Third Reading):
	The House divided: Ayes 309, Noes 233.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

PREVENTION OF TERRORISM BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83(A),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
	Proceedings
	2. Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be completed at one day's sitting.
	3. On that day, proceedings in Committee of the whole House and any proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion five hours after the commencement of those proceedings or one hour before the moment of interruption, whichever is the later.
	4. On that day, proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion six hours after the commencement of proceedings in Committee of the whole House or at the moment of interruption, whichever is the later.
	Programming Committee
	5. Standing Order No.83B (programming commmittees) shall not apply to proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on consideration or proceedings on Third Reading.
	Programming of other proceedings
	6. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.[Mr. Heppell.]
	The House divided: Ayes 305, Noes 196.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Dominic Grieve: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The House may be aware that a variety of allegations and revelations have appeared today concerning the circumstances in which the Attorney-General's advice to the Government prior to the war in Iraq was made. Those include an assertion, with some supporting documentation, that the final advice that was placed in front of the Cabinet had not in fact been prepared by the Attorney-General, but by Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. In those circumstances, and in view of the highly unusual nature of those allegations, have you received any notice from the Solicitor-General that she will come to make a statement to the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: First, perhaps I should say that I know nothing of these things. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's specific question, however, no such request has been received to my knowledge.

PREVENTION OF TERRORISM BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52 (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of
	(1) any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown by virtue of the Act, and
	(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of such money under any other Act.[Mr. Heppell.]
	Question agreed to.

ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.[Mr. Heppell.]

David Drew: I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this Adjournment debate after all the excitement that went previously. This is an important topic. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), on the Front Bench. May I start by thanking her for accepting a delegation from Naturewatch, on whose behalf I will largely speak? That charity is not based in my constituency, but in that of my friend, even though he is of a different party, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Jones).
	I want to thank particularly Richard Tweedy, who helped me to compile the information on this debate. He, along with the hon. Members for Lewes (Norman Baker) and for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) were able to come to a meeting in December 2003 at which John Ruane, the chief executive of Naturewatch, drew attention to the important issue of the use of animals in experimentation.
	I make no apology for the fact that I shall talk about the use of primates and what has happened over the past few years. There are accountable procedures through the Animal Procedures Committee's reports, and more recently we have had the Boyd group report . The Boyd group is influential in combining both scientists and welfarists but unfortunately it seems not to have much power. The APC, which was set up by the Home Office to advise on the use of animal scientific procedures, based on the 1986 legislation, apparently has more authority. It is fair to say that the APC has been quite good at producing impressive reports, but it is for us to question what happens on the back of those reports. I shall be asking my hon. Friend the Minister to provide greater clarification and some assurances that we shall be given more information that is meaningful. There seems to be a greater use of primates, which some of us find reprehensible
	I am trying to ascertain what has happened since the last APC report. What actions were taken on the back of that report? Do we need further to clarify the Government's attitude towards it? I will sign up to the three Rsno doubt my hon. Friend will talk about themwhich are the Government's stated policy on animal experimentation, but we want to see actions as well as words.
	Most primate use is in toxicologydrug testing. About 70 per cent. of the primates are used in that way. The main species are marmosets and macaques. Baboons have not been used since 1998, largely because housing and husbandry costs are too high. Great apes have not been used since 1988, and thankfully their use has been banned since 1995.
	Seventy per cent. of the use of primates is in toxicology. Most toxicology testing is done on rodents, but there is a regulatory requirement to test drugs in two species, one of which must be a non-rodent. The second species is usually dogs, unless they are unsuitable. For example, there is the drug class known as NSAIDS, which includes aspirin, to which dogs tend to have an adverse reaction. If dogs are not used, primates tend to be the usual alternative.
	A major concern is that primates are used by convention and not of necessity. In other words, primates are used as an alternative to dogs because primates have always been used. The scientific rationale is that because of this there is more background data relating to primates than to other species. Should this be questioned, given the ethical dimension?
	The APC notes that the regulations have considerable power, such as those that apply to the US Food and Drug Administration. It comments that
	this is alarming given that there is a lack of transparency in their function. It is extremely hard to ascertain exactly how they operate.
	My hon. Friend the Minister may wish to respond to that statement.
	Current practice acts to undermine the operation of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. For example, commercial pressures may lead to rodent and primate studies being undertaken simultaneously, when the primate studies should be carried out only after the first studies on rodents have been successful. Also, generic licences for large toxicology projects do not provide sufficient justification for the use of primates, so insufficient detail is given in licence applications for justifying their use.
	The developing areas of alternatives are micro-dose studies in humans and non-invasive scanning techniques such as NMRnuclear magnetic resonanceand PETpositron emission tomography. It is not clear whether enough resources have been allocated to moving towards those technologies and away from the use of primates.
	I have two key questions. First, is a secondary, non-rodent species always necessary under the current testing regime? Secondly, when primates are used, are they really the only suitable species? There are other important issues, but I will not discuss them at this point because I want to bring those two issues to the Minister's attention tonight.
	The future use of primates concerns Naturewatch, in particular, and those of us who take a keen interest in the future use of animal experimentation. The number of tests declined slightly in the 1990s, and one might have expected that trend to continue. Drugs are increasingly likely to be targeted at human receptors, so they cannot be tested on rodents, which do not have those receptors, but they may be tested on primates. The graphs show a significant recent increase in the number of primates used.
	Research is increasingly focused on diseases of old age in the brain such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and strokes, which has resulted in an increased call for the use of primates. Finally, the human genome project is likely to lead to an increased emphasis on primates in order to determine the function of the 10 per cent. of human genes that are unique to primates and are not found in rodents. Pressures seem to exist to bring forward the greater use of primates, at least in unison with testing on rodents. Given the nature of new drugs and how the genome project is being taken forward, people who work in that area always say that they want more licences to use primates.
	My conclusions concern the role of the APC, which has stated:
	The drive to produce pharmaceuticals for human benefit, and the associated primate use that this currently entails, clearly creates a conflict with the desire to minimise and eliminate the use of primates in experiments. If the predictions of an increased demand for primate use are realised then this conflict becomes more intense. The Subcommittee believes that it is extremely important to recognise this conflict, and absolutely essential to more determinedly and actively seek ways of resolving it. However, it must be recognised that this is a global issue, which needs to be tackled on an international basis.
	The APC is aware of the dilemma. If it were asked to examine what is happening in the world of research, it would conclude that primates are more rather than less likely to be brought forward for experimentation, despite that being against the nature of what many of us would like to see.
	What steps have the Government taken to address the use of primates as a second species in toxicology testing? In particular, have they tackled the automatic assumption that a non-rodent species is necessary in the testing of all drugs? Secondly, what conversations have the Government had with the regulators on those issues? Thirdly, what progress has been made in developing and promoting human micro-dose studies as an alternative to the use of primates in toxicology? Lastly, what work has been done on assessing the predicted value of primate studies by comparing pre-clinical and clinical studies of drugs that have progressed to the clinical trial stage and beyond?
	If I had time, I would go into a number of related issues. I would certainly examine the severe experimentation on cats, dogs and horses as well as primates. The APC has also agreed to review procedures of substantial severity involving xenotransplantation. I am particularly interested in that subject because some have said that redefinitionthe third Ris allowable because we will see greater use of xenotransplantation. It would be reasonable at this stage to ask the Government whether that is acceptable and whether it will reduce the use of primates, but also whether there are problems. For example, when there has been xenotransplantation of pig livers into primates, there has been evidence of chronic pain and of a real impact on the central nervous system. That is something my hon. Friend might wish to talk about.
	Finally, the main contribution of the Boyd group report on primates in experiments was to summarise scientific knowledge in areas such as the sentience of primates. There was a good discussion of the moral status of apes and whether an ape is a person, but much of it was not germane to this debate so I will not go into it at this time. However, it showed that when we talk about the use of primates, we have to be clear where we are drawing the line in terms of what is currently banned and what is allowable. It would be helpful if my hon. Friend clarified which of the primate family were allowable for testing and which were not.
	Monkeys are less sophisticated than great apes, but increasingly show signs of intelligence. Given that their social lives are important, that they express reconciliation and that they show signs of understanding consolation, we ought to be reducing the use of these animals, rather than encouraging it.
	In conclusion, I ask my hon. Friend to put on the record that the APC and the Boyd group report have done some valuable work in highlighting the issues, but it is up to the Government now to state categorically that they will seek to find alternative ways in which animal experimentation, if necessary, can be taken forward other than with the use of primates.

Caroline Flint: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) on securing the debate and I thank him for his comments about our meeting in my office. I say to him and to other hon. Members that I have an open door to future delegations. This area is kept under constant scrutiny by hon. Members, organisations such as Naturewatch, our Department and by the APC.
	There are some issues on which I will have to come back to my hon. Friend, if that does not cause him too many problems, but I wish to point out a few issues regarding Government policy on the use of animals. We believe that animal experiments continue to be necessary if improvements in health care are to be developed with the minimum of delay and to protect the public and the environment from other hazards.
	The NHS would be unable to function effectively were it not for the availability of medicines and treatments developed or validated through research using animals. It is no exaggeration to say that almost every form of conventional medical treatment has relied in part on the study of animals. Asthma treatments, medicines for peptic ulcers, schizophrenia and depression, polio vaccine, kidney dialysis and transplants are just a few examples.
	While we accept that animal experimentation is both effective and necessary, we believe that it should also be kept under review and its use should be challenged. That is why we need to weigh up the benefits to the public against the cost to the animals. We must look at whether there are any other ways of achieving the desired results. We must also look at the procedures that are applied to animals and at how we can make sure that they cause the least suffering and use the minimum number of animals to achieve the outcome. Of course, in all cases, we must ensure that the highest standards of animal welfare are applied.
	We believe that this approach reflects closely what the public want. Opinion polls carried out in 1999 and 2002 reported that more than eight out of 10 of those surveyed felt that animal experimentation was justified for medical research, provided that all necessary steps were taken to minimise any resulting animal suffering. Basically, people want to be healthy and safe, but they also want to make sure that, where animals are used, welfare considerations are taken into account.

Norman Baker: The Minister is right, but does she accept that the majority of the public are unhappy about the use of primates in animal experimentation, and hundreds of Members of Parliament have signed early-day motions expressing such concern?

Caroline Flint: I accept that when it comes to primates there are additional concerns, which is why we must ensure that when we license procedures involving the use of primates we can satisfy ourselves, Members of the House and those outside as to the reasons for that.
	The Government's job is to find a way of balancing public aspirations for cures for the health problems and diseases that reduce the quality of life of millions of people and condemn many to an early death, with the extent to which we can allow science and technologies to use animals.
	We believe that legislation provides a highly effective means of doing that. The Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 is rightly described by many as the toughest legislation of its kind in the worldsomething of which we should be proudand we should try to ensure that those standards are applied elsewhere, through our engagement in Europe and globally. At the same time, it is not a straitjacket. It is flexible enough to allow the latest ideas and technologies to be taken into account when decisions are made about animal use and to ensure that animal welfare costs are minimised.
	In some areas primate use remains essential. I accept the points that my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman made on public concern about the use of primates, and in recognition of that, primates are given special protection under the 1986 Act and may be used only where no other species is suitable, where the likely welfare cost to them has been carefully weighed against the expected benefits of the research, and where everything possible has been done to minimise their numbers and suffering.
	Unfortunately, we cannot end the use of primates without halting important areas of medical and scientific research, or jeopardising human safety. At present, primates are mainly used to ensure the safety of medicines and certain vaccines. They are also used in research on Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, visual impairment, stroke and reproduction disorders.
	Neuroscience research on non-human primates has produced, and continues to produce, significant advances in the management of a number of devastating and prevalent human conditions that are not otherwise amenable to long-term treatment by other means, such as the management of Parkinson's disease and the treatment of intractable movement disorders.
	My hon. Friend referred in particular to the increase in primate use in 2003. I understand that there is concern about the reported 20 per cent. increase in scientific procedures using primates in 2003, and I understand the concern about whether that may show a long-term upward trend in their use. I can reassure the House that that is not the case. When we saw the figures, officials looked deeply into the reasons for the increase.
	I can report to the House that the great majority of the additional procedures recorded in 2003 stemmed from a single causeblood sampling for the development of in vitro tests. This work, for which no other species was suitable, has continued in 2004, but I am pleased to say that early indications are that significantly fewer procedures using primates have been carried out for this purpose in 2004, compared with 2003. Obviously, we must keep the matter under review and continue to monitor the statistics, but I hope that that, at least for tonight, provides some explanation and reassurance for 2004.
	Looking to the longer-term trends in primate use, there are bound to be some annual fluctuations, but the number of procedures using primates has remained fairly stable for a number of years and we believe appears likely to remain so. The figure for 2003 was only 0.17 per cent. of the total for all animals. However, I understand that primates are a special case and the law is therefore even more stringent when allowing licences for their use. There is no evidence that the amount of primate use is being affected by an increase in brain research or developments in the human genome project. We will continue to keep that under review.
	The human genome project is more likely to lead to increased use of genetically modified mice into which human genes have been inserted rather than greater primate research. Again, we will keep the matter under review and continue to ensure that all primate use is fully justified.
	My hon. Friend referred to the Animal Procedures Committee and its work. As he knows, it launched its report on primates in July 2003. It contained several recommendations that were aimed at reducing primate use. In our initial response in November 2003, we accepted the committee's principal recommendation that there should be a stakeholders' forum on primate use. The Home Office and the committee jointly organised a forum that drew together APC members and a range of primate users and regulators in January 2004.
	The Home Office has prepared a summary of the forum's findings and the chairman of the APC recently agreed it. It will be placed on the Home Office and APC websites shortly for further comment from stakeholders. I would therefore welcome it if hon. Members read the report. I am sure that they will come back to me with any issues that they want to raise.

David Drew: The APC's original report dates back to December 2002. I know that various interim statements and 12 recommendations were made. It is now February 2005we have waited an awfully long time. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the matter will be clarified on the website?

Caroline Flint: I take my hon. Friend's concerns on board. The report will appear on the website. We are responsible for providing a full and final response to all the Committee's recommendations when further consultation has been completed. When we place the forum's findings on the website, we will seek views from other stakeholders, such as non-governmental organisations and hon. Members, on them. We will consider those views when we devise our final report on the recommendations. I hope that that will create an opportunity for further debate. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I would be happy to see hon. Members at some stage when we can hold a more detailed discussion about the issues.
	My hon. Friend commented on progress on the National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. He knows that we have made significant progress on establishing the centre for three Rs. I am happy to inform hon. Members that the centre has already awarded its first two grants and launched a specific three Rs funding scheme, with a budget of 500,000 in 2005. The first applications have been received and are currently being peer reviewed. The board has also held a stakeholder meeting with a wide range of participants, including the RSPCA and the Dr. Hadwen Trust for Humane Research. That is an important development and the Department of Trade and Industry is the lead organisation on that.
	The use of dogs was mentioned. The 1986 Act requires that regulated procedures use animals with the lowest neurophysiological sensitivity necessary to produce satisfactory results. Primates could therefore never be used merely as a convenient alternative to the dog. There has to be a clear scientific justification for the use of primates in every case. Second species use is necessary for some types of agent to be sure of their effect on man. However, I repeat that we examine every request for the use of primates seriously.
	My hon. Friend mentioned xenotransplantation. No solid organ xenotransplantation is currently licensed in the UK, so in the context of what my hon. Friend has said that is not an issue for us now. Who knows? There may be an application in the future, but there are none at the moment, and I am aware of none in the near future.
	Animal experimentation is an area in which Government policy must recognise a wide range of opinions when making the best possible provision to meet the public interestand the public interest is often in two minds, as it were. Part of that involves being as open and transparent as possible about why animals are being used. I understand that we have made progress on licence summaries, and that details are now available on websites to help people understand the ways in which licences are being used. That is a huge step forward since I took up my responsibilities.
	Because of public concerns, this is a highly regulated sector and will continue to be so. We are open at all times to suggestions about opportunities to reduce the use of animals in experimentation, not just primates but other animals. We do believe, however, that there are potential benefits to us and the environment that can currently be achieved only through the strictly controlled used of animals. As I said earlier, we should also bear in mind the need for all animal use to be fully justified, and for animal suffering to be minimised and carefully weighed against the potential benefits.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to respond to a debate that can have no closure, because it is an ongoing discussion. We should use the opportunities provided in the House to increase awareness of these important issues.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at six minutes past Nine o'clock.